formatting external hard drive usb_control/bulk_msg:timeout
 

Please can someone help. Im trying to format an external hard drive in the form of a phatnoise mp3 player. It is 80 GIG and as I have windows xp I have to use a version of Linux to enable me to start formatting.

Everything runs fine for a few moments until I get the following error message and the formatting ceases.

usb_control/bulk_msg:timeout

Can someone advise how I can prevent this happening and get the DMS or hard drive to format.

Many thanks