Thank you for being a valued part of the CNET community. As of December 1, 2020, the forums are in read-only format. In early 2021, CNET Forums will no longer be available. We are grateful for the participation and advice you have provided to one another over the years.

Thanks,

CNET Support

General discussion

Need help w/ external hdd

Apr 18, 2005 11:40AM PDT

Recently I purchased an enclosure for a 3.5" 120GB Seagate hard drive which was slave in my desktop. After installing the hdd in the enclosure, plugging it into my laptop, and turning it on, I could hear the disk spinning, but the light on the enclosure didn't come on and the pc showed no signs of recognition. I tried all usb ports, turning the hdd on and off, restarting the computer. The hdd only contains folders of pictures and mp3 files, and both machines use XP home. Am I missing something, or is something faulty?

Thanks for your help in advance.

Discussion is locked

- Collapse -
Did you do anything with the jumpers?
Apr 18, 2005 12:19PM PDT

You said it was a slave in your desktop. If the jumpers are still set as such, this could be your problem. Set the drive to CS (cable select) and try again. Now, did the PC recognize the enclosure's controller? It must see this first. Afterwards the drive should be recognized. Sometimes, however, it cannot read the drive properly and requires partitioning/formatting using the disk management tool in XP.

- Collapse -
I had same issue..... this might help
Apr 19, 2005 2:49PM PDT

I did the same with the same problem. It resolved when I tried a different usb cable.... the one that came with the unit had serial ability and 2-usb connects. using a direct run resolved the problem. I am still having recognition problems, but am now at least detected. hope it helps