My external USB harddrive was working fine until today. It doesn't appear to have a model number on it, but it's a 300 GB Toshiba. I'm running Windows XP, not sure which Service Pack.
I'm not sure when the problem started, the last time I know for sure it was working was yesterday afternoon, since then I don't think I've done anything with it other than unplug/plug it (always ejecting it at the system tray first), torrent mp3s onto it and play mp3s from it.
Problems have persisted even after unplugging and plugging it back in.
Here is a list of symptoms:
- Hard Drive does not appear in "My Computer". I can only access it by typing in the drive letter "G:/" into the address bar in the file explorer.
- Cannot access it by typing "G:/" from the Run dialog in the Start menu. The error I get says that no program is associated with that file for performing that action (not sure of the exact english wording, the OS is french).
- Cannot rename or move files to have filenames longer than 8 characters or with special characters.
- Can read files from it (at least mp3s) no problem. Can write files as well (filenames subject to issue #3).
- If I right click and go to "New...", instead of "Folder", "Shortcut", and then a big list of different filetypes, I just see the "Folder" option.
I haven't rebooted yet - I'll try that now. I'm posting this anyway because even if rebooting does fix it, I'd still like to know what happened.
EDIT: Rebooting did fix it.
