Hello, I am having a problem with an external 1 Tb USB data drive
(Samsung G3 Station). If the drive is not accessed for a time
(eg when the PC is in suspend mode) then it becomes inaccessible.
On soft reboot it is no longer listed in the bios. Contact with
the drive can be re-established either by a hard reboot, or by
unplug/replug of the data cable.

This is the second Samsung I have tested with the same problem.
It is plugged into a functioning USB port (another WD 120 Gb USB
drive is always recognized on this port).

I wonder if there is anything I can do to maintain contact with the
HD? Seems it may be difficult if the problem arises at the bios
level.

Thanks for any suggestions....

Motherboard: Intel DH55HC
Processor: Intel Core i5 750@2.67 MHz
OS: Slackware 13 with Linux kernel v. 2.6.29.6-smp

You might try and add usb to your fstab if it is not there.

Thanks Larry. This is my fstab entry:

/dev/sdd2 /mnt/fat-d vfat defaults 0 0

Unfortunately this is not sufficient to activate the USB drive (/dev/sdd). At this stage
it is not recognized in the bios during warm reboot (**). After cold reboot it appears as a
boot device (Samsung G3 station) and then the partition can be mounted. It is beginning
to look like a design fault in the drive (this is my second Samsung with the same problem).

I should mention that the first partition (/dev/sdd1) is NTFS, and I know there are
problems associated with this file system under Linux. I can't see how that would affect
the bios though...

(**) That is, after first putting the system into suspend mode (or standby under Windows).
Once the power light goes off the USB drive won't reactivate other than through a hard
reboot (or unplug/replug the data cable).