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General discussion

USB hard drive not recongnised

Jun 2, 2005 7:03AM PDT

I have just bought an external usb hard drive case that enables me to add in any ide hard drive. Whenever I put in my 40gb maxtor hard drive it gets recognised instantly on my windows xp service pack 2 system. However when I swap the drive to my IBM 120gb hard drive it does not even get shown in device manager. I put the IBM drive in another system but attached directly to the internal ide cable and the drive works fine. I then reformatted the IBM drive but it is still not recognised when I place it back into the usb case and attach it to my system. I did try changing around the drive jumpers but nothing seems to work. Does anyone have any ideas?

Discussion is locked

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You mention jumpers.
Jun 2, 2005 7:28AM PDT

The only cases I see have all but one setting. It's cable select. If your documention states otherwise, that would be a first or some very old unit.

The drive may not show in Explorer. Try the disk management tool (Start, Help & Support if you can't find it.)

Bob

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At a loss.....
Jun 2, 2005 9:35AM PDT

The jumpers I were referring to were the ones on the hard drive itself. But whatever setting I think they are ignored. I can set the jumpers on my Maxtor drive to master, slave or cable select and it is always recognised. I have tried the IBM drive on more than one computer within the USB case and it never gets recognised. I can now only guess. I wonder if its a capacity problem, incompatibility or some other obscure reason?

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WHERE are you looking?
Jun 2, 2005 10:24AM PDT

For instance the DRIVE MANAGEMENT tool?

Stick with cable select. It's too bad you didn't supply the make and model of the case.

Bob

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Make of case
Jun 2, 2005 6:22PM PDT

Apologies as I tried to post full details previously but closed my browser down too quickly.
Case is as in the link below:

http://www.thetechzone.com/display.php?i=212&p=1

When I look under computer management then device manager and disk drives the IBM drive does not appear there. However swapping over for the Maxtor drive and it appears under device manager ok.

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That helped.
Jun 2, 2005 9:22PM PDT

1. The cable type appears to be 80 conductor IDE in the drive case. That means to stick to CABLE SELECT.

2. You didn't look in the DISK MANAGEMENT you can find with Start, Help and Support. It's fine you looked in the device manager, but do try the other.

It could be an older design case that didn't support that drive or the drive just doesn't work in that case.

Bob

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Update
Jun 3, 2005 5:27AM PDT

Yes I did look in disk management it was one of the first things I checked but it does not appear there. I phoned the tech support place this afternoon from where I purchased this product and the guy at the other said end seemed to think that my drive is not supported by the USB controller in external USB device.

Now if I had bought a car that was not able to drive on fast roads................................