gnu -

If you have one of the WDs with the "optical partition" in it, you'd see TWO Drives come up when you plug it in instead of the one expected. The default name for the optical part would probably be something like "WD Smartware" and it would show NO FREE SPACE (right click on the drive and Properties) since you can't write anything to it.

Lots of external USB devices get their power from the USB socket that they're plugged into, but the amount of power the socket can supply is limited. A few devices (example - external DVD burners) come with a "pigtail" lead so you can plug into two separate USB sockets, one of which supplies only power while the other does the signal stuff and whatevr additonal power is needed.

You can plug an external USB HUB into any socket and plug several devices into the hub, and if you use an external powered hub, with a wall wart to provide power from a wall socket, the power drain on the computer's socket will be minimized. If you use a "passive hub" all the power for all of the USB devices you hook to the hub has to come from the single computer socket you plug the hub into.

It's rare, but overloading a USB socket can burn out (or permanently degrade performance for) the socket or its controller. Unlikely as it is, if you should happen to overload a powered external hub enough to hurt it, it's $15 bucks for a replacement, but if you smoke the one in the computer it's major surgery.

Overloading a passive hub is more likely to affect the built-in port than the external hub, since all the power for everything that's plugged into the passive slave hub has to come from that computer port, and some single individual USB devices need about all the power a single port is supposed to be able to provide.

If your USB devices are having trouble being recognized it's possible that your USB manager in the computer has gotten fouled. This usually happens if you've unplugged and replugged things without using the "safely remove hardware" button. The recommended procedure is to disconnect all of the USB devices and then go into Device Manager and DELETE ALL THE USB STUFF. Reboot, and connect USB devices one at a time and let PlugNPlay rebuild the setup.

Note though that when you delete all the USB controllers, your keyboard and mouse, both of which probably go through a USB port even if you're "wireless," will disappear. The ports aren't labeled in Device Manager so that you can tell what device is on which port, so it's guess work to get the mouse last, and getting a "clean" shutdown after you've disabled both mouse and keyboard is a little bit of a puzzle.

John