USB external hard drive disconnecting

[Reid Rivenburgh]

2008/2/5 Mikkel L. Ellertson <mikkel at infinity-ltd.com>:
> Does this drive have its own power supply, or is it powered off the
> USB bus? Have you noticed anything happening about the same time it
> has problems? (Moving the drive, the machine suspending, etc?)

Hi Mikkel, thanks for replying.  It has its own power supply.    (It
is plugged into the computer's extra plug, though.  Maybe that's
taxing the power supply?  Not something that occurred to me.)

I'm not doing anything special when the disconnects happen.  It's a
desktop machine that's always on, and the drive is just sitting on my
desk.

> The first thing I would do is check the USB cable to the drive to
> make sure it is plugged in all the way on both ends, and is not a
> defective cable. If moving the cable causes problems, that is a good
> indication of a cable problem. If it has its own power supply, check
> that connection as well. Also, check that the supply is not getting
> too hot.

It seems like the USB cable is plugged in okay on both ends.  I bet I
have another around here, so I will try that.  I can also try plugging
the power cord into another outlet.

One additional irritation with this is that I'm not getting tons of
lines like this in /var/log/messages:

Feb  5 11:03:20 pigpen kernel: scsi 24:0:0:0: rejecting I/O to dead device

So many that rsyslogd is using 50% of my CPU!  I'm not sure how to get
that to stop, so I may need to reboot.....

Thanks for the suggestions!

reid