Hard drive redux

[Bikewer]

OK, I installed the old drive from my wifes defunct machine in mine. (see below post....) I had a bit of trouble figuring out the jumper settings for my drive, but got it straightened out and fired it up.
The computer recognized the drive, and I got the "new hardware detected" message. The drive appeared as "E" under my computer, and I was able to open it and check the data.

Cool.

10 minutes later, after checking my e-mail, the drive had dissapeared from the drives list.
It still showed up in the device manager, however, and the DM said it was "working properly".
I tried uninstalling the driver and re-starting XP, and I again got the "new hardware" message.
However, it still wasn't showing up in the drives list.

I sent Western digital a service query, and they have sent me a detailed article on checking external USB drives....?????

Any ideas? It may well be that the thing is fried. Any easy way to check?

[a_unique_person]

This can happen if the jumpers aren't set properly. That is, different brands of drives will react differently when they are set wrong. They can just not be recognised, realise you made a mistake and work anyway, or just work intermittently, and this depends on what brand the other drive is.

Are you sure you set the jumpers properly.

I was given a PC at work that had a CD-ROM, for example. It would not be recognised at boot up, but would if you reset it after it booted up.

The problem was it was working as the only drive on the cable, but was jumpered to be the slave. Easy enough to fix, but the slackers who installed it didn't check to work it was working properly.

[Bikewer]

I'm installing some more memory this afternoon, and I'll re-check.

They are of two different brands.