XP not recognising WD 160 GB hard disk in external enclosure

by prk001 Jun 7, 2005 5:53AM PDT

Hi,
I have a compaq presario 2135US laptop.
I have bought WD 160 GB hard disk(WD1600JBRTL) & Bytecc ME-320 series external enclosure.
When I connect the hard drive stuffed in bytecc enclosure through the USB port,
XP doesn't recognize it 90% of the time.
In the last three days, I tried connecting & disconnecting the hard drive several times & only twice the hard drive was recognized in the disk management window & I partitioned & formatted the drive & copied a few files. Then I rebooted my laptop without removing the hard disk from USB port. Now, the disk is not getting recognized.

When the hard disk was recognized those two times, the capacity of the disk is shown as 2048 GB when actually the size is 160 GB.

When I set the jumper settings for external hard drive as Master or Cable Select or Slave, I see the following message in the properties for the disk in device manager.
This device cannot start (code 10), the driver file is listed as: USBSTOR.SYS

When I set the jumper setting as Single(pins 4-6), the device manager shows the USB mass storage as working fine but the disk management doesn't show the drive.

The enclosure is working fine. I have replaced the hard disk with a BenQ DVD writer & the writer gets recognized instantaneously.

I am not really sure whether the issue is with Hard disk or with the Operating system. I don't have a desktop to stick the hard disk & verify whether it is working fine or not.

Thanks,
Rudra

Discussion is locked

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by jcrobso Jun 7, 2005 6:38AM PDT

You ned to be at XP SP1 or better. John

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(NT) (NT) I am running XP SP2

by prk001 Jun 7, 2005 7:00AM PDT

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What enclosure?

by r. proffitt Forum moderator Jun 7, 2005 7:32AM PDT

I can't find the exact make and model, but it could be that old problem of 48bitlba support lacking in the drive enclosure. Try a new housing.

Another issue is that I can't tell who installed the OS. Many forget motherboard drivers.

Bob

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Drivers

by prk001 Jun 8, 2005 1:35AM PDT

Here is the URL for the enclosure.
http://www.byteccusa.com/product/enclosure/ME-320.htm
The enclosure supports upto 300 GB & it has oxford 911 chipset.

The housing is working perfectly fine for the DVD-+RW writer. The writer gets recognized instantaneously in the same housing.

Windows XP came installed along with my presario 2135US laptop. Its an OEM installation.

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Small World.

by r. proffitt Forum moderator Jun 8, 2005 2:19AM PDT

I happen to have these 2 parts to test out.

1. The ME-320X. Notice that X in the part number? Did yours have a label with such?

On the box it has ME-320U2 and ME-320F checked off.

2. An 160GB IBM Deskstar to put in said drive.

My host machine is a properly installed P4 w/ XP Pro SP2 system with some noname USB 2.0 card. Let's see what happens when I connect it all up?

a. The drive is found.
b. Since I didn't prepare the drive in that enclosure... I get to partition and format it. Running the disk management tool now.....
c. There were some older non-compatible partitions so those were deleted and a new partition is being made and formatting continues.
d. Now copying files in.
e. It's at some 10 GB so I'll post this.

I wonder if it's the usual problem where people move drives from internal to external and expect them to keep working?

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Different Enclosure

by prk001 Jun 9, 2005 11:34PM PDT

Putting the hard disk in a different enclosure did the trick.
It looks like the WD hard disk & Bytecc ME-320 enclosure are not compatible.
When I inserted the hard disk in Compusa enclosure, the hard disk was recognized instantaneously & even the hard disk size was reported correctly.

Thanks,
Rudra

XP not recognising WD 160 GB hard disk in external enclosure

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