Storage Solutions Usb Case for IDE HDD

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Bought a new 80gb ide disk and a usb case for it. But when I connected them to the USB port...it says unknown device...i am using windows Xp...n also got USB 2.0

Is it necessary that the disk needs to be formatted b4 using it thru USB.
 
Please escuse me if I am wrong - but I thought that the USB drive would only be shown in XP's drives list after it is formatted - on first power on I go to XP's Disk Management and if the new USB drive is not listed there I select Refresh.

I formatted my 2 USB2 drives from XP's Disk Management and they were only then shown in the drives list in Windows Explorer.

I enabled the USB port to which the drive is attached in the BIOS and if I want to Boot off the USB drive on my ASUS P4C800ED MoBo I enable "Legacy Support for USB ports" in the BIOS.

If Legacy Support for USB is enabled in BIOS than MEMTEST fails the memory test - I dont know why this happens but it happened to me and when I checked on the forums other peole also reported this.

I use a Bootable Acronis True Image CDR and make my system backups with this from the HDD's to the USB drives.
 
What Service pack are you on... I attached my 80 Gigger with the USB enclosure and it worked in a single shot...

Switch posted 0.78 minutes later:

Hey is there a power switch on the USB enclosure... I beleive you havent forgotten to switch it on...
 
Hacker said:
Is it necessary that the disk needs to be formatted b4 using it thru USB.
Click to expand...

I always format my drives on the controller they will be connected to - dont know why but I just do it this way - in this case the controller is the USB case so my drives are formatted whilst they are in the case either by a WinME Boot floppy for FAT32 or from XP's Disk Management for NTFS.
 
Eazy, when i had bought my usb box a few months ago, i attached my old ide drive in it and it worked straight away.

Not only that when i connected my cdrom to it there was no problem reading the CD disc contents. but changing of cd disc without power recycling does not work.

deejay posted 4.55 minutes later:
Eazy said:
I always format my drives on the controller they will be connected to - dont know why but I just do it this way - in this case the controller is the USB case so my drives are formatted whilst they are in the case either by a WinME Boot floppy for FAT32 or from XP's Disk Management for NTFS.
Click to expand...
No, i am afraid you have erred in ur judgement here. the controller is not in the usb case. The ide drive is working in IDE / ATA mode , just like as if it was attached to ur ide ports on the pc. what happens is this.

the IC on that small board inside the box converts these ide bus data to usb format. i.e. from parallel to serial. Thats all.
 
deejay said:
Eazy, when i had bought my usb box a few months ago, i attached my old ide drive in it and it worked straight away.

Not only that when i connected my cdrom to it there was no problem reading the CD disc contents. but changing of cd disc without power recycling does not work.
Click to expand...

YUP I am sure the drives will work when formatted by the MoBo and then connected to the USB dive - but I have seen with FDISK that the drive size is a little different when formatted on different controllers - even from a format on 2 different MoBos. Not much but a teeny weeny difference insize - this shows up in drive details seen in FDISK as unformatted size. And I have a thought at the back of my mind that each controllers writes the tracks slightly differntly (may be all nonsense) but I am more confortable formatting on the controller the drive will be run on. When I change a drive from the USB to the MoBo contrller or vice versa I reformat the drive :)

Eazy posted 9.1 minutes later:
deejay said:
No, i am afraid you have erred in ur judgement here. the controller is not in the usb case. The ide drive is working in IDE / ATA mode , just like as if it was attached to ur ide ports on the pc. what happens is this.
the IC on that small board inside the box converts these ide bus data to usb format. i.e. from parallel to serial. Thats all.
Click to expand...

OH !! ... I feel certain you know what you say here ... so I am wrong in my thinking... Hmmmm....I learned something new today ... THANKS :)

I have read a bit about the main chip inside the USB cases and it seems that some are very good and some are BAD. I know that some will not allow a Optical drive to run. So you have been lucky with your USB case. I have a list somewhere of all the good and bad chips but cannot find it at the moment. I have read that external cases which have both USB2 and Firewire are not good.
 
Thanx for the replies but it still didnt work in xp. i have sp2. Even checked mmc > device management.

So i booted in knoppix, the drive was detected by knoppix, formatted n made 3 partitions of fat32, booted in xp but still no luck.

Had bought this for a friend, gave it to him, he has win 98, he installed the some driver given in the cd, and it was working properly at his place.

The manual said no driver was needed for xp, dont know why it didnt work at my place. :huh:
 
to make it work.. put the jumper on the hard disk such that its a master drive...(The way you would use it if it was in your system)..
and then connect to winxp.. the usb hard disk should be detected and work right away..
and you do`nt need to format the drive.... well i didn`t need to anyways.. it would work straight away!
 
The Solution:

Try downloading the HDD Utility from manufacturer's website of the HDD(Seagate/Samsung) and try running the disk at ATA 66 instead of ATA 133 by the help of the utility... This is what i did with my friend's drive and it worked. Also i made 20 GB fat partitions but i dont think thats necessary. Do this and let me know.
 
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