So I have been having issues with my n900 showing up correctly as mass storage or on PC suite when I plug it in to my win 7 computer.

I have had my n900 for about 2 months and it worked great for the first few weeks connecting as mass storage. I got my music and videos onto it so I can pass my train rides with entertainment.

After a couple weeks of swapping video back and forth, whenever I plugged in my n900, windows would ask me to do a scan of the drive. I could hit cancel and it would connect like normal, or I could hit scan. When I hit scan I would get a popup saying that windows couldn't scan because the device was in use. I could chose force a dismount and scan when reconnected. Nothing would happen when I chose that so I just kept cancelling the scan.

Now when I hit mass storage all i can get is my micro SD card to show up on my computer. The n900 drive doesn't even make an appearance.

I have also tried using PC Suite as the connection. It seems to work fine for a while but then in the middle of adding or deleting files I get an error saying that the device has stopped responding or has been disconnected.

So, is there anyway to get the drive to show back up? Or for the n900 to work correctly with the PC Suite mode?

Sorry for the long description, hopefully it helps to reach some answers.

Do you disconnect it before unplugging the wire?

Sounds like a FS corruption. fsck would be option one, flashing would be number two.

There's an entry in the wiki about how to do that, N900 only mounts the EMMC partition that is FAT32, that's what you need to clear. Should be safe.

Make a backup.

mine also in the same league. the only way to get my eMMC to show up again is by uninstall usb mass storage in the device and let it reinstall again.

I did the fsck on the home/usr/MyDocs and it seemed to fix things up.
Now when I plug it in it will connect right away and I will see my micro SD and the n900 drive. But then a few seconds later it will disconnect and reconnect again saying that my device will preform faster if I connect it to a Hi-Speed USB 2.0 port. All of my usb ports are usb 2.0. and it still seems hit or miss as to if my n900 drive shows up.

PC Suite still seems to connect then hang up.

Thanks for the help so far. Atleast I have a better chance at my n900 drive showing up.

What version do you run (firmware)?

Also, I got that too when connecting through a hub. Some hubs do that, and remember, the ports in the PC are in a hub as well, using an external hub is cascading already.

I have this really convenient vertical port hub I like but every now and then just spits out my N900, my Sony Alpha and a few other devices. I have to reset the whole chain (all cables unplugged, all hubs powered down, etc).

Might be a localized issue. Try back ports. Try non-hubbed. Try a friend's USB. You might well have a compromised USB hub. It's way more widespread than people think.

I am updated to the latest Firmware. And I am plugged into the back of my computer, right off the motherboard, and have also tried the usb ports in the front of the computer.

So at the moment I can now see my drive again. It will work fine for a few minutes then dismount and remount automatically at which this time the message to plug it into a usb 2.0 port appears.

I have gotten the windows scandisk to startup, but in the middle of that it does the dismount / remount thing again. Then says to plug it into a usb 2.0 slot. The check disk will re-popup but when I star that up I get the message "Windows can't check the disk while it's in use. At this point I can force a dismount and nothing happens. If i go to try and start the scan again, the scan window juts closes when I hit start.

This also only seems to be an issue on my windows 7 machine with the PC suite loaded onto it. Seems to work fine in mass storage on the xp computer at work that cant load pc suite without the xp-64 disc.

Maybe you have an issue with the USB stack on the PC or a borked driver, most likely Nokia's - i think they mount even in mass storage mode because PCS keeps complaining N900 is in an incompatible mode, so it know what it is. I gave it up a long time ago for W7, it's darn useless.

Windows 7 seems to only have issues with the bluetooth drivers for the n900.

So far after the fsck and making sure i disable the n900 through the USB icon before unplugging the device, it has been working fine. Just the issue where it stops working with USB 2.0 for some reason.