Dan,

 

This is an obvious suggestion but have you unplugged the USB external drive and tried plugging it back in. Unplug it with the machine off and replug it after the machine has booted. This should cause windows to re-enumerate the USB drive and find it. Also, you might try a different USB port. If none of the above works you may have a bad USB card or problem on the mobo. This all makes the assumption that the drive itself is powering up okay.

 

Regards - MichaelO

Yes I have tried to reboot with the (fire wire/1394) connection unplugged  and then re plug.  All to no avail.  The drive itself sounds as if it is starting up also.  I have also tried using the front connection on my PC.

 

Thanks for your help.  Any other suggestions.

Yep!  Did that too.  I just had my wife connect it to her laptop and it didn't show up there either.  I'm going to hate life if it's the drive.  I've stored all my music, about 500 Cd's on it.  And I did this because i lost all my music twice before when my PC went down.  So I get an external and then this.  UGH!

 

Thanks again.  Dan

Dan,

 

I have an XPS 700. In the BIOS the 1394 ports supported by the motherboard can enabled/disabled. Have you checked the settings in the BIOS? Since both ports are inoperative this might be the culprit. On the 700 you enter the BIOS by pressing F2 on the Dell boot screen. Not sure of the sequence on the 600 but that is the next thing you need to check In the 700 BIOS the 1394 control is under system devices in the menus. Hope this helps and also that this is the problem.

 

Regards - MichaelO

Dan,

 

I have only one more suggestion. The problem appears to be with the external drive since your wife's laptop can't see it either. However the drive itself might still be okay. I am betting that the drive is an ATA/eide type. You might try buying an external enclosure (no drive) and mounting the drive from your firewire enclosure in the new one and see if you can read the drive. Its just possible that the enclosure interface/controller has failed and not the drive itself.

 

Just to be safe I would get a USB enclosure as they are more common though many of the new ones support both (I don't suppose yours also support USB does it?). They are relatively inexpensive compared to the value of the data on the drive. When my SATA root drive failed I used this techniques to recover my data file successfully. I now backup everything to a separate hard drive regularly and once a month I backup the backup drive to my 4th hard drive. I am paranoid.

 

Beyond that I am out of ideas.

 

Regards - MichaelO

What bios version are u using

I am using BIOS revision A06

try upgrading to Bios A11 .. Bios A 11 fixed my USB devices not detected