I have a Windows 2003 Enterprise server with SP2 installed and all current updates. I'm trying to connect a Western Digital Passport USB-powered drive to it but it is not being recognized. The drive powers up and I can feel/hear the platter spinning. But I get no indication from Windows that it even knows about the drive. It's not listed in the disk management utility and has absolutely no reference in device manager. I've just updated the BIOS on this server (Dell 2900) to the latest to no avail. The drive works fine on a WinXP SP2 computer by just plugging it in. No drivers are necessary on WinXP. After calling WD they say they do no support the server line of operating systems. So do I just try and return the drive or is there something I can do? Thanks! Todd

Does this computer recognize other USB devices? -Ryan Adams Computer Tips, Guides, Downloads, and more:http://RyanTAdams.com

Yep, it uses a USB mouse and keyboard. These both work when connected directly or when going to a USB KVM (the KVM manufacturer and model is even recognized in Device Manager). I think this comes down to some type of USB driver missing from Win2K3. I've read about quite a few people having problems with USB devices on MS server products. Thanks, Todd

Anyone have any ideas? Thanks, Todd

I have a Dell PE 3400 with Win2k3 Server... it also does not recognize my WD "MyBook" 500GB external USB drive. It works with an older WD external USB drive, but with the new "MyBook" I hear the drive spin-up and it can be seen on the "Safely Remove Hardware" USB listing, but it doesn't assign it a drive letter. It shows the drive as "RAW" (instead of NTFS). I plugged it back into my XP machine and it works fine.

I have a passport drive connected to my win2k3 server. I found (after large amount of trial and error) that getting it to be seen by the server is a combination of powering off the server and connecting the drive whilst the server is off. Whe the server comes back up, it sees the drive. Note: I have subsequently found that this connection is un-reliable as the drive letter will just "disappear" after several days of being up. I'm still investigating to see if this is due to the drive or due to other apps on the server (there are also a couple of non-related services which also seem to fail at the same time)..... Tom