WIN XP in X21 doesnt recognize my USB devide

[chanbru]

Hi.
I have a Western Digital external drive USB 2.0 that I am trying to conect to my X21. I did everything I know of to make it appear in the X21. It does show a USB devide in the controller, but it shows no recognition. Anyone has any idea?

[hishamh]

IIANM, the X21 only has USB 1.1 ports - it might not recognise a USB2 device, though they're all supposed to be backwards compatible. Are you running XP?

[chanbru]

Yes, I am running Win XP. I only switched form Win2000 to XP because of the conveniences of using some USB devices. But now this.... Since the X series have no CD or DVD drives attached to them and I dont want to carry a ultrabase all the time, I bought some USB drives of the size of a pack of cigarret. I wonder how I can solve this problem. Western digital claims there is no installation driver for its drive and blames MS. LOL and XP askes me to do things that dont work.
OMG! Help me!!!!!!!!

[hishamh]

Now that I think of it, I may know what's going on - is the drive being powered externally, or is it bus-powered (i.e. only through the USB port)? It may be that it's not receiveing enough power to spin up. If that's the case, you can try running it through a powered USB hub first before connecting to your Thinkpad. Alternatively get a Y cable that allows you to connect to two ports simultaneously - this provides double the power (1000A rather than 500mA).