Usb 2.0 external harddrive randomly disconnects

[p3t3r1]

Hello, I am using a Maxtor 80 GB external hard drive. It uses USB 2.0 connection to transfer data. I am using the K7S5A Pro Rev 5.0 motherboard with 4 USB 2.0 slots and 6 USB 1.1 slots. (All included on the motherboard). It used to be all USB 1.1 ports but I recently upgraded 4 ports in the back to usb 2.0 using VIA drivers obtained here. http://www.manhattan-support.com/faq...&id=61&lang=en

I did not disable the usb 1.1 ports in BIOS like it said to.

My Operating system is Windows XP Home SP1. I did not upgrade to SP2 because there were issues with VIA drivers on SP2.

I can connects the external hard drive fine and see all the partions. The problem occurs after abotu 20 minutes of connecting, the usb hard drive suddenly disappears doing file transfer. It immediately reappears again but it left the file been transfer corrupted. I was able to trasnfer about 10 700 mb .avis before this happen. After that, it discconnects and reconnects by itself about every 60 to 80 seconds.

I would really appreciate it if someone could give me a fix to this problem. Thanks.

Here is a picture of my usb devices in the device manager.

EDIT: I disconnected the usb cable and power and let the external hard drive rest for about 4 minutes. Then I reconnected and was able to use another 20 minutes before problem occurs. Could this be heat realated? My enclousure is metal and I never had a usb malfunction caused by heat.