Checking to see whether an external drive is attached 1

[outonalimb]

I have a client who uses an external drive for backup purposes. The backup is scheduled to run every night and backup to drive E: which is the external USB drive.

The problem is that he alternates between 2 drives and keeps one in a safe in case of disaster. When he unplugs the USB cable and power cable on one drive and swaps it for the other drive sometimes Windows does not recognise the it and the backup fails.

My question is, is there a way of notifying the user that the drive is not attached properly? I want a 'ping' for checking hard drive availability! So if the drive was swapped and could not be mounted properly, a beep would sound (or an e-mail sent) to notify user.

Any help with this would be great. Thanks.

 

[dglienna]

Have him properly STOP the device before removing. When he plugs in the other drive, it will wake the system

-David
2006 & 2007 Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP)
2006 Dell Certified System Professional (CSP)

 

[LWComputingMVP]

You can also review the script I wrote - I create a marker file on the drive and check for it's existence. Then I also e-mail the log files upon completion of backup.

My script is available at

http://www.lwcomputing.com/mysoftware.asp

 

[outonalimb]

Thanks lwcomputing. Appreciate your help.