2 external USB WD 1TB drives - only one recognized

  • Thread starter Thread starter Bill Pomeroy
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B

Bill Pomeroy

Win XP Pro is the OS. Installed 2 external WD 1TB "My Book" USB drives.
Both drives are recognized if they are installed separately, but if both are
connected, one of them will be banged out in device manager (Code 10)
unrecognized device. I spent 1 hour on the phone with WD "senior" tech
support all to no avail. He had me try front USB ports, rear USB ports,
changing wall plugs and surge protectors and then decided that it was an OS
problem and could offer no further support. He felt that the OS was using
the same device ID for both drives and that is why when both were connected,
one would be banged out.
Can anyone help with this problem?
TIA
BillP
 
Don't know if this will help but it is worth a try if not
already tried. Go into Device Manager with only one drive
plugged in. Change the drive letter for this drive to
something that is available. Plug in the second drive.
Does the machine still have problems or does the machine now
have two drive letters? I have two USB drives that if I
plug them in on the same machine without changing one drive
letter the 2nd drive won't show up.

Hope it helps.
 
I'd go along with that as something to try, I've seen the same thing myself
when using 2 flash drives. However I think to change the drive letter you
need to go into disk management & not device manager. (right click my
computer and go to manage then disk management)

Neil
 
Bill said:
Win XP Pro is the OS. Installed 2 external WD 1TB "My Book" USB drives.
Both drives are recognized if they are installed separately, but if both are
connected, one of them will be banged out in device manager (Code 10)
unrecognized device. I spent 1 hour on the phone with WD "senior" tech
support all to no avail. He had me try front USB ports, rear USB ports,
changing wall plugs and surge protectors and then decided that it was an OS
problem and could offer no further support. He felt that the OS was using
the same device ID for both drives and that is why when both were connected,
one would be banged out.
Can anyone help with this problem?
Click to expand...

Maybe two drives with identical USB hardware serial numbers:
http://www.uwe-sieber.de/usbtrouble_e.html#identical_drives


Uwe
 
I ended up having to install a 3 port firewire PCI card and run the drives
off firewire, fortunately they had both firewire 400/800 and USB support.
Thanks for everyone's help in trying to get them working with USB.
BillP
 
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