External Firewire Drive Disappears

[Piyono]

My250GB MaxLine Plus II drive is housed in a Bytec ME-320U2F enclosure (which sports a Prolific PL-3507 chipset), connected to my Gigabyte GA-7N400 Pro2 rev.2 through its onboard firewire port (controlled by a TI TSB43AB23).

Twice, so far, the drive letter has simply vanished in the course of normal operation. Just like that. One second I have drive I: and the next second it's gone. The system tray icon, however, indicates that the drive is still attached. Weird.

Cycling power on the enclosure restores the drive letter.

Running XP Pro SP2.

Anyone?

Piyono

 

[Piyono]

15 minutes with Google reveal that I'm not the first one to encounter this bug. Nobody has an answer, tho.

Piyono

 

[LunarMist]

There was a long thread at SR last year about the crappy Prolific chipset. The weird thing is that I purchased a couple of the same enclosures, but they were equipped with Oxford 911s for some reason.

 

[Piyono]

The ME-320F enclosure is FireWire-only and it uses the 911 chipset.

]-[

 

[LunarMist]

Oh, that is probably the reason. My unit is inside the computer now, so I cannot confirm the identity.

 

[Pradeep]

USB is the debil.