Shared external drive folder unshared itself!

I recently replaced a Freeagent Pro with a Goflex Desk. Both the new and old drives were permanently assigned drive letter H and the new drive fitted in seamlessly about a week ago. The old drive is not used

My Synctoy backups (run via Task Scheduler) all worked fine daily from 28th July until today when H was not found.

I checked the properties and sharing was unchecked (not by any human hand!)

The drive is permanently attached via USB.

Are there any gremlins at work?

All thoughts welcome

Pete

I suspect that the missing "Share" property may be a result of the drive being turned off.
Potentially a product of how your USB hubs (Generic/Root) are configured power management in device manager.
Check each one, right click choose properties and take a look under the power management tab you may need to uncheck the box that says "Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power"

Hi thanks for the response. All the power down boxes are checked and the Seagate drive manager is set to sleep after 15 mins. They have been from the outset. For whatever reason the drive doesn't actually sleep (or at least no lights go out or dim.

Having run for 6 days with no changes to anything and having been safely removed a couple of times on day 3 it has performed without problem up till now.

The primary difference between the Goflex and its predecessors is that it's USB. The Freeagent Xtreme was Esata as was the Freeagent Pro before that (they both died under warranty! The Goflex is the replacement). Clearly Esata drives were not a commercial success.

The original Pro had a power switch, so once the backups took place I just shut it off. The Xtreme was on all the while and I don't think it was built for that as its life was only 8 months.

Ideally I'd be happy if I could power the Goflex down once the backups are done in the morning. I really don't need it all day but it's a pain to plug and unplug it from the rear USB port.

any thoughts

Pete