sigi wrote:
> I recently came into possession of a 2 TB USB-2.0 external hard drive and
> tried to deal with it in BIBM. However, it was not reliably (but very
> erratically on rare and non-reproduceable occasions only) detected by BIBM
> on my PC.
I wanted a USB drive on which I could store BIBM partition images. Since the Seagates were not visible to BIBM, I decided to use instead a 1.5TB Maxtor USB2 drive. I carefully checked that it was visible to BIBM, and it was. Then, when I came to create a partition image a couple of days later, BIBM could not see it.

For some reason I decided to reboot, and on rebooting BIBM could see it.
I am starting to wonder whether the problem is caused by aggressive power management by the USB controller inside the disk enclosure. It seems as though they are intended to be powered from the electric mains all of the time, and it is the USB controller in the disk enclosure that decides when to switch the disk on and off (not the same as the "spin down" that Windows may initiate when the disk is idle). When a PC or laptop appears at the end of the USB cable, the controller powers up the disk. But this takes a finite amount of time. Perhaps BIBM is not waiting long enough for a response. For the "USB bus", BIBM waits 10 seconds, but for some reason these disks usually appear on the "BIOS bus", where perhaps the wait is too short.
I am hoping that I can find a particular sequence of actions that will guarantee that BIBM sees the Maxtor.
> Then I found out that Image for Windows and Image for Linux reliably detect
> this hard drive on my PC. Image for Linux has the additional advantage
> that its toolbar contains a button "Work with Partitions", which
> opens the familiar BIBM environment. I do not know whether you own this
> Terabyte software bundle. If not, you might want to buy it.
Yes, I purchased the "all in one" bundle, as that seemed the best value, but I have not yet downloaded the other products. (Thinks: I must do that!)
-- from CyberSimian in the UK