USB Hard Drive won't read

It's something that is recently started and I cannot figure out why. One minute the hard drive is working and if I move the wire, it reads it, or doesn't. However, moving the wire doesn't always make it stop reading the hard drive or start it seems to do it at random times. The computer is also asking for a driver for the hard drive, but when I go to search for one, it says that one is already installed. This is a 250 gig hard drive and works fine. I considered that my USB port was perhaps kicking the bucket, but when I plug other things into it, it's fine. So what is causing this? Any ideas?
And on the same note, my USBs also areclaiming that 1, there isn't enough power to run something, or two, whatever is hooked to them could be faster. I am not understanding what is going on. So is it a USB issue? If so, how do I fix it? I cannot get another motherboard for this, because the motherboards are no longer made for this model. It's a Satellite A 105 series.
I am running Vista Premium with 1.5g memory.

Fyrehawk wrote:
It's something that is recently started and I cannot figure out why. One minute the hard drive is working and if I move the wire, it reads it, or doesn't. However, moving the wire doesn't always make it stop reading the hard drive or start it seems to do it at random times. The computer is also asking for a driver for the hard drive, but when I go to search for one, it says that one is already installed. This is a 250 gig hard drive and works fine. I considered that my USB port was perhaps kicking the bucket, but when I plug other things into it, it's fine. So what is causing this? Any ideas?
And on the same note, my USBs also areclaiming that 1, there isn't enough power to run something, or two, whatever is hooked to them could be faster. I am not understanding what is going on. So is it a USB issue? If so, how do I fix it? I cannot get another motherboard for this, because the motherboards are no longer made for this model. It's a Satellite A 105 series.
I am running Vista Premium with 1.5g memory.
The USB port is probably not providing sufficient power to run the external hard drive. Either use an external power supply for the drive, or see if the drive came with a secondary USB cable with a power jack on one end. Connecting the drive to 2 USB ports, one for data/power and the other for power only may solve the problem.

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Message was edited by: chadwicked

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