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General discussion

Help with external IDE 2.5 drive

Dec 30, 2010 1:42AM PST

Hey guys, I'm just curious if anyone here might be able to help me out. I've bought one of those cheap external HDD bays from Dealextreme for my old 2.5 drives.

My laptop detects a "mass storage" device, but I can't access the hard drive. I've tried with two different 2.5 IDE drives in various jumper configs.

If I place the jumper in "cable select", my computer makes the "Ding" sound that it's found a USB device. However, like mentioned above it just won't show me the external hard drive.

If I place the jumpers in any other config, my laptop won't recognize it at all.

I'm running Windows 7 Ultimate 32bit trying to access these drives. I believe Windows 2000 is installed on each one using either FAT32 or NTFS.

Discussion is locked

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Details
Dec 30, 2010 3:06AM PST

How is that device powered? Are you using 1 HD or 2 at a time? Plus, can you test elsewhere the validity of the old HDs are working. If you can, simply erase and reformat that way and then swap over. If the current format Fat32 or NTFS?

It helps to provide full details of the items in question, please do so.

tada -----Willy Happy

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Reply
Dec 30, 2010 5:29AM PST

Hey Willy, those laptop drives are working fine. Pulled directly from working laptops which I sold. I wanted to back up the contents of the drives before reformatting them.

I'm using two hard drives at once, the one inside the laptop and the external, USB powered one. My internal drive is NTFS.

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System is ??????????
Dec 30, 2010 8:49AM PST

Let's deal with one HD at a time, to divide problems. If this HD wasn't original to the laptop, it should have been installed and with the OS, in order to get *everything* up and running, especially XP and later OS-es, it shouldn't just take-off on its own to a new laptop.
Depending on the HD supplied, you need to select HD1 or master setup to begin with, though CS should have worked, but again you supplied no details of the HD maker or even the laptop in question. The laptop maker can supply typical "replacement HD setup" or use the HD makers setup routine/software. If the laptop is dual int. setup one, again, select working with one new one for now + org. laptop HD. The laptop maker should supply details of the setup for the 2nary HD, usually CS. Then you use the OS HD manager to prepare it and/or config.

tada -----Willy Happy

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Kinda figured...
Dec 30, 2010 11:15AM PST

I kind figured that once I hook up the external (Fujitsu) hard drives that they'd work like any other external hard drive, allowing me to see the files contained within.

Both hard drives are from Fujitsu, they came off of 2002 era Lifebook.

I'm not trying to use the installed operating systems, just trying to access them (the files contained within) as an external harddrive through my Win 7 laptop.

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Bump
Dec 31, 2010 11:40PM PST

I hate to bump threads, but I'd like to figure out what I'm doing wrong or if something else is at fault.

Like I've mentioned, both hard drives were pulled from Lifebooks. They're 40gb Fujitsu drives. I'm not trying to use the operating system installed, I just want to look into the folders and directories of the drive THROUGH my USB hard drive enclosure.

I'm doing this through a Windows 7 laptop.

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Just ideas.
Dec 31, 2010 11:56PM PST
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Thanks
Jan 1, 2011 10:36AM PST

Thanks for the info Proffitt. There's a small hole for a power source on my external hard drive enclosure. I can try to find out if I have an adapter that would work, but I'm unsure of what voltage to use.

I checked out the thread linked in Cnet Storage, and I've tried accessing the USB data through Ubuntu but no dice.

Am going to mess around a bit more, but I know a couple others who've had the same enclosure with the same hard drive and it worked for them. :/

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Have you tried partitioning?
Jan 16, 2011 11:17AM PST

Have you tried to partition the drive?

Go to "Computer" on your desktop. If it's not there, right click on the desktop, select personalize and then select Chenge Desktop Icons. Put a check beside Computer. Go back to the desktop and right click Computer. Click on Manage. Under Storage click Disk Management. This will give you a list of available drives. Check to see if your external Fujitsu is listed. If it is, right click on it and select Delete Volume (if it's available). After this you should have a hard drive with a raw partition. Now you can repartition it and format it from within this same management software.

If the drive is not showing up in the Management software then the other posts are likely right in that you may need an ac adapter or a USB cable with two connectors on one end to add enough power for the drive to run..