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Guest
I have two IDE hard disks, to be used as external hard disks for backups.
For this purpose I bought two NexStar hard drive enclosures, with an IDE/USB
interface. The first one, a Maxtor 60 GB disk, works fine.
With the second one I have a problem:
The hard disk for the second one is an IBM Deskstar, 80 GB. Prior to
installing it into the enclosure its partitions had been deleted, so there
was one unallocated and unformatted space, for re-formatting, once connected
to a PC.
The following problems/symptoms are identical under WinXP SP-2 and Vista
Ultimate, on two different machines, both using SATA for their internal hard
disks:
When connected to either machine, in the bios boot sequence the ‘new’ USB
disk is shown. In the device manager it shows, either as ‘working properly’
or as having ‘no drivers installed’. Flipping the on/off switch on the case,
there is the typical sound of a new device having been connected or
disconnected. However, under control panel > computer management > disk
management it does not show up. It also does not show up in Windows Explorer
or My Computer.
Using Partition Magic, I created a 5GB partition using the NTFS file system,
no change.
I did swap the enclosures, no change. So, a faulty IDE/USB interface in the
enclosure has essentially been ruled out.
In further efforts to resolve the issue, I mounted the disk into a desktop,
checked it & completely formatted it. Mounted it again in its external case.
This time the device manager clearly listed it under disks as an external
USB device with the correct IBM identification.
Again, it would not show up in My Computer, Windows Explorer, &/or in Disk
Management.
The disk is clearly not faulty. The external case with IDE/USB interface is
not faulty. It appears to be a software issue which appears identically in
WinXP SP2 & in Win Vista.
Also, If one boots up or down with the external disk connected, booting up
or down takes about 20 minutes.
For this purpose I bought two NexStar hard drive enclosures, with an IDE/USB
interface. The first one, a Maxtor 60 GB disk, works fine.
With the second one I have a problem:
The hard disk for the second one is an IBM Deskstar, 80 GB. Prior to
installing it into the enclosure its partitions had been deleted, so there
was one unallocated and unformatted space, for re-formatting, once connected
to a PC.
The following problems/symptoms are identical under WinXP SP-2 and Vista
Ultimate, on two different machines, both using SATA for their internal hard
disks:
When connected to either machine, in the bios boot sequence the ‘new’ USB
disk is shown. In the device manager it shows, either as ‘working properly’
or as having ‘no drivers installed’. Flipping the on/off switch on the case,
there is the typical sound of a new device having been connected or
disconnected. However, under control panel > computer management > disk
management it does not show up. It also does not show up in Windows Explorer
or My Computer.
Using Partition Magic, I created a 5GB partition using the NTFS file system,
no change.
I did swap the enclosures, no change. So, a faulty IDE/USB interface in the
enclosure has essentially been ruled out.
In further efforts to resolve the issue, I mounted the disk into a desktop,
checked it & completely formatted it. Mounted it again in its external case.
This time the device manager clearly listed it under disks as an external
USB device with the correct IBM identification.
Again, it would not show up in My Computer, Windows Explorer, &/or in Disk
Management.
The disk is clearly not faulty. The external case with IDE/USB interface is
not faulty. It appears to be a software issue which appears identically in
WinXP SP2 & in Win Vista.
Also, If one boots up or down with the external disk connected, booting up
or down takes about 20 minutes.