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General discussion

data lost when connecting multiple external devices

Mar 12, 2005 8:50AM PST

I have a 3.5" external enclosure that I want to use for an external hard drive, and a 5.25" enclosure that I want to use for an external DVD writer. Each seems to work fine when connected separately, but if I connect both at the same time, the directory structure on the external hard drive gets corrupted and the drive becomes completely inaccessible. This happens within about 15-20 minutes of connecting both devices.

I originally tried this with a 200GB hard drive that was NTFS formatted. My enclosure should be able to handle hard drives up to 300GB, but I thought maybe the hard drive size was a problem, so I also tried with a 14GB FAT32 hard drive. The symptoms were identical: At first, some directories become unreadable, and eventually, the entire drive becomes unreadable. The data is permanently lost: connecting the drive internally after it has been corrupted did not help, and Norton disk doctor wasn't even able to detect that the drive had been formatted.

I'm running windows 2000. The enclosures I'm using are USB2.0 and firewire combo enclosures, I'm hooking them up via fire wire.

The 5.25" enclosure is a SANMAX CD-509-Combo containing an AOpen DUW1608 DVD writer.

The 3.5" enclosure is a "BYTECC 3.5" USB 2.0/ 1394 Combo Aluminum External Enclosure, Model ME-740U2F".

Discussion is locked

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Did you try USB 2.0?
Mar 12, 2005 8:57AM PST

Firewire was pretty amazing new stuff for Windows 2000.

Best of luck.

Bob

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Re: Did you try USB 2.0?
Mar 12, 2005 10:06AM PST

My computer only came with USB1, I'm use a PCI card to get fire wire. I tried hooking everything up to a friend's computer using USB 2.0, and had no problems there. My friend also uses windows 2000.

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So for 10 to 20 bucks, you can cure this?
Mar 12, 2005 10:24AM PST

Seems like you've found a solution.

Bob

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Re: So for 10 to 20 bucks, you can cure this?
Mar 12, 2005 11:01AM PST

If I understand correctly, you're suggesting that I buy a PCI card to get USB2.0? That sounds like a good idea, I'll probably end up doing that.

However, the reason I got a USB + Firewire enclosure in the first place is that I wanted to be able to take my data along and hook it up whereever I go. I'm afraid if I don't get to the bottom of this problem, I'm always at risk of loosing data whenever I hook up the hard drive to another machine. If I can't carry my data around, I might as well just get another IDE controller card and forget about the external enclosure.

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There is no bottom.
Mar 12, 2005 11:13AM PST

You are dealing with over 14 suppliers, an over 5 year old and firewire.

You know better...

Bob

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One thing.
Mar 12, 2005 11:22AM PST

I have this friend that was sharing such a hard disk as he went from place to place and he constantly would lose it all. After awhile I asked him to keep notes about what machines and who owned them. We came down to just two owners and machines that would wipe him out.

It wasn't his hardware after all.

In your case, you just need to pop in the USB 2.0, retest and get going.

Bob