HP external USB hard drive installation problem

5

Did you contact HP?

I have the same problem with a Freecom Classic Hard Drive, external usb hard drive. I have already contacted HP in the Netherlands, but they do not have a proper solution. Can anyone help me!

Count me in on this problem to! My drives a Freecom classic 250GB and it entered stealth mode yesterday for no apparant reason. The found new hardware message 'Cypress AT2LP RC42' appears when the drive is plugged in regardless of computer.
If you look on google, it seems to be a recent problem (January 06') and i think it might be something to do with a Microsoft security update that has enabled driver signing on the drive. Something along these lines would explain why many peoples drives have this error regardless of make.
I have sourced some drivers that windows has asked for and will let you know if this sorts it.

I contacted HP and they sent a replacement drive to me. I had no problem when I plugged it in. Although they didnt say what was wrong they didnt argue with me when I asked for a replacement. I think the drives are bad.

Simply buy a new enclosure for the drive.

I have had no problems with my Medion 2 Ggh ext HD, until today. Now getting message that no drivers for Cypress AT2LP RC42 (which is obviously the manufacturer's original name). Windows did update last night, and as mentioned elsewhere by someone else in this thread, late January 06, could be the reason why drivers can't be found.
Has anyone been able to rectify this problem, or find appropriate drivers?

Hi there, it's a general problem of Cypress...
Cypress manufactures the most commonly used USB-2-IDE chips (usually AT2LP RC42). This chip seems to have a problem lately, since tons of external harddrives and burners etc. are stopping to work. Instead this chip is recognized by Windows as a new hardware.
I had the problem after using my 300 GB external Trekstor harddrive for 6 months...! And guess what, Trekstor doesn't allow to open the housing and delete the confidential data, I would loose my warranty. And of course they wouldn't want to send a replacement Kit or anything.
And since there's no way I can give that data away, I'm screwed. The HDD inside is perfectly fine by the way. Of course I took it out to check if the backups are ok.
I hope this helps you a little
MK

Hi I have had the same problem bought 3 freecom drives from PC world as they were on offer all three failed after about 6 months with the same problem.
Just stopped working with the message Cypress AT2LP RC42.

P.C world did replace them without any problems but i lot a lot of backup data.

Didn't expect all 3 to fail !!

Don't buy this Hard drive !!

Hi All !
I had the same problem with my HDD, a 320GB Toshiba external (well, inside was a WesternDigital drive, as Toshiba only makes 2,5inch and 1,8inch drives). I spent 2 weeks trying to solve it and finally figured out:
The USB chip (manufactured by Cypress !) can fulfill multiple roles. What will do once it received power depends on a small PLA array (non-volatile memory). For some reasons,  probably poor manufacturing process by the vendor of external HDD, the programing of the chip is not done properly and after a while will "forget" it's settings.
The good news is that we can reprogram that chip ourselves, and this is done so:
1. First an alternative driver is to be installed, that driver is necesary to put the chipset in programming mode.
2. A new programing is performed. This takes very short as there are only 255bytes
3. External drive is power cycled and voila, it works again.
My unit was still under warranty. The added bonus is that all your data is still intact and accesible.

Toshiba Netherlands sent me to the shop where I bought it and the shop immediatelly offered to give me a replacement. Unfortuantelly I could not accept it since I did not wanted to loose all data I had. I suspected all the time that I could gain access to data by removing the drive from inside the enclosure and directly connecting it to the ATA100 interface in my PC, but that would mean also renouncing to the rest of the warranty (10months). In the end, after almost 2 weeks of research I could repair it using the method above.
On short:
If your unit is still under warranty and you can dispose of the data inside, you can send it back.
If otherwise, you can write me to grieg45@yahoo.com for the utilities.

Email sent :D

}...the bane of my life!
http://www.fuzzyd.co.uk

Send the email;), thanks

I have a Toshiba PX1220E-1G25 250Gb external USB hard drive with the same problems described above.  Via another forum I have managed to get to stage 1 of the process suggested by Grieg45 (ie, I have installed the Cypress driver).  However, I now need the correct program and .ini file for this drive to reprogram the eeprom.  I have obtained a program called dbflash.exe from elsewhere which does seem to work and 'goes green', but the drive is still not recognised, and I am sure I need something tailored to the needs of this drive.  Has anyone done a fix on this model - any help gratefully received.  I am trying to sort this via Toshiba Level 3 support, but they are hard to get hold of.

Phillip