external hd's drop off mysteriously?? wtf?

[WinterXL]

So I've got a couple USB external HDs. One is a Buffalo 250GB (fyi, I'm in Japan, and Buffalo is pretty popular here), and the other is a standard 200GB HD in an external enclosure that says "Proof" on the side.

The problem is, they will just drop off randomly... and Windows will play that ba-dunk... ba-dink as they go and come back. AND I DONT KNOW WHY!!!!! Its exactly like they're being physically unplugged and then plugged-in.

This has got me sooooo freaking frustrated. I do a lot of multimedia work and they'll just drop out when a file is in the middle of saving, or during media playback, or during rendering, or whatever... and it sometimes corrupts files and such.

I just can't rely on them anymore. And I paid good money.

Does anyone have any, any, any clue, no matter how miniscule? What could be causing this? How do I fix / stop it?

I need help

Edit:

Its a P4 2.26, ASUS P4B-E (i think), 1gb ram, audigy 2. I've even come to suspect the soundcard as I've found Creative Labs makes complete unadulterated garbage [sorry, just frustrated ]

 

[her34]

poor usb on external drive. i solved my problem by getting different brand

 

[her34]

oh and make sure the jumper is set right (usually master). but if that's not the problem, then it's probably the fault of usb on external drive

 

[Bozo Galora]

dunno, sounds like you dont have enough juice to run both HDD USB extrnal

I would run a prog like MBM (motherboard monitor) and set app to log every second on voltages and see if you get a dip just before they crash - compare logtime data with crash
Might be crappy PSU

http://www.passmark.com/products/usb2loopback.htm