External USB drive disconnecting itself.

[Chris Ruprecht]

Mikkel L. Ellertson wrote:
> I wonder if the electronics for the interface are powered from the
> USB bus? That should not be a problem, unless your card skimped on
> the USB power. Do you have the problem if only one drive is plugged in?
>
> Mikkel
>   
I bought an Adaptec dual port USB 2.0 card yesterday and connected one 
of the two USB drives to it. Then, I told the machine to move some files 
from the drive connected to the old USB card to the drive connected to 
the Adaptec card.

After a few minutes, the drive on the older card disconnected itself, 
once again. I removed the cabled from the card and did some tests on the 
Adaptec connected drive - it never disconnected. Eventually, I connected 
the other drive to the Adaptec card, too and, 'til now, everything still 
works and last night's backup completed successfully. I guess the $12 
card is just not up to the task, but the $25 card is.

Thanks for all your help tracking this down!

Chris