Imicro HDD Enclsoure not Working with Seagate/Windows XP

  • Thread starter Thread starter dwill
  • Start date Start date
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dwill

Hi everyone,
I have looked through all of the old posts regarding what problems people
have had with HDD enclosures and XP and unfortunately have not found a
solution.

Here is my situation:
Imicro 3.5" HDD Enclosure
Seagate 160 GB IDE Drive ( works inside of the machine, has all of its data)
Windows XP Pro SP2

Windows XP recognizes the enclosure and installs it as a USB Mass Storage
Device.

My instructions say to set the hard drive ( Seagate ) as master with the
jumper
which I did.

But, it never shows up in Windows Explorer as a drive, neither does it show up
in Disk Management.

My next step was to play with the jumpers. I set it to the setting that says
"limits drive to 32 GB" and the drive showed up in Windows Explorer.
Windows XP then says the drive is "not formatted", do you want to format it
now?

I said NO

So, I have a conundrum where the drive won't show up unless I set it to the
min size. But, since the drive does show up when I set the drive to the min
size, I feel like somehow Windows can't see the 160 GB size and recognize it
as as master?

I then went out and bought another drive by another manufacturer and the
same thing happened. So, this seems to be a problem between Windows XP and
the external drive.

Thanks for any help!

David
 
How old is the hard drive enclosure? Have you checked any documentation
that came with the enclosure to ensure that it is compatible with the
drive/s you are installing? I had an older HD enclosure that wouldn't take
any drive over 80 GB. Seems like this may be an issue with the one you have
since the 32 GB switch apparently let the enclosure's electronics see the
drive when it was set. (Of course XP would say the drive wasn't formatted
with the 32 GB limit set since you had changed the drives parameters by
setting it there from 160 GB.) Although I have about 10 HD enclosures, and
haven't seen any switches within the enclosures to limit HD types, check the
documentation for yours to ensure that there isn't such a switch.

If you can't find any documentation on the drive, attempt to find a drive
about 60-80 GB and see if that drive works. If so there is a definite limit
within the enclosure and not within XP.
 
dwill said:
Hi everyone,
I have looked through all of the old posts regarding what problems people
have had with HDD enclosures and XP and unfortunately have not found a
solution.

Here is my situation:
Imicro 3.5" HDD Enclosure
Seagate 160 GB IDE Drive ( works inside of the machine, has all of its data)
Windows XP Pro SP2

Windows XP recognizes the enclosure and installs it as a USB Mass Storage
Device.

My instructions say to set the hard drive ( Seagate ) as master with the
jumper
which I did.

But, it never shows up in Windows Explorer as a drive, neither does it show up
in Disk Management.

My next step was to play with the jumpers. I set it to the setting that says
"limits drive to 32 GB" and the drive showed up in Windows Explorer.
Windows XP then says the drive is "not formatted", do you want to format it
now?

I said NO

So, I have a conundrum where the drive won't show up unless I set it to the
min size. But, since the drive does show up when I set the drive to the min
size, I feel like somehow Windows can't see the 160 GB size and recognize it
as as master?

I then went out and bought another drive by another manufacturer and the
same thing happened. So, this seems to be a problem between Windows XP and
the external drive.

Thanks for any help!

David
Click to expand...

Is the enclosure brand new, or is it something from the Dark Ages ?

Maybe the enclosure has a size limitation.

One reviewer for this item "iMicro IMBS35E-SI Aluminum 3.5" USB 2.0 External"
says that a 120GB drive reported only 40GB.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductReview.aspx?Item=N82E16817423005

My guess would be, purchase a different brand of enclosure.

For example, the reviews on this one aren't too bad. Bytecc brand.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductReview.aspx?Item=N82E16817145385

Personally, I only use 3.5" enclosures that have a fan. There are a
lot of enclosures with no provision for cooling. But I won't be
buying them. I've even had to drill extra holes in one of
my enclosures, to get some semblance of air circulation. They
put a fan in it, but no holes for air intake. How dumb
can you get...

This AMS enclosure has a fan in it. But the Cypress brand adapter chip
appears to have a problem - one customer notes that the controller chip
was struck dumb one day, and no longer knew what it was supposed to be.
It didn't hurt the data on the drive, but made the enclosure useless.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductReview.aspx?Item=N82E16817145656

"found new hardware Cypress AT2LP RC42 please click to install"

Good luck,
Paul
 
Well, I tried an 8GB Western Digital drive and it worked just fine.
Not sure if this means Seagates don't work well with imicro or is it
the size of the drive. Also, I tried a different company's enclosure and it
did not work with the 160 GB drive either.

I'm starting to think Seagates does not work with any other enclosure than
theirs ( Seagates )


http://seagate.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/seagate.cfg/
php/enduser/popup_adp.php?p_faqid=1335&p_created=
1042574998

David
 
I have a Seagate 160Gb drive in a generic USB2 enclosure & there's no
problem, so I don't think it's the drive.
Neil
 
dwill said:
Well, I tried an 8GB Western Digital drive and it worked just fine.
Not sure if this means Seagates don't work well with imicro or is it
the size of the drive. Also, I tried a different company's enclosure and
it
did not work with the 160 GB drive either.

I'm starting to think Seagates does not work with any other enclosure than
theirs ( Seagates )


http://seagate.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/seagate.cfg/
php/enduser/popup_adp.php?p_faqid=1335&p_created=
1042574998

David
Click to expand...


David:
The following will probably not be of any help to you but just as background
info for you and others who have been running into this USB non-recognition
problem particularly as it affects the XP OS...

These USB non-recognition problems have been vexing all of us for some time
now. We've become increasingly convinced that the relatively large number of
problems in this area involving the non-recognition of USB devices that
we've all been experiencing is an indication that there is something
seriously flawed with respect to either the USB 2.0 specifications, possibly
involving quality control issues affecting the manufacturer of these USB
devices as well as supporting components such as motherboards and other
USB-related components. Then too, we've become increasingly suspicious of
the XP OS as it relates to its recognition of and interaction with these USB
2.0 devices.

We have encountered far too many unexplained problems affecting
detection/recognition of these devices and their erratic functioning not to
believe that something is seriously amiss in this area.

We continually encounter situations where a USB 2.0 device - generally
involving a flash drive or USB external hard drive, will work perfectly fine
in one machine and not in another. And, in far too many cases, we're unable
to determine why this is so since we're unable to detect any
hardware/software problem in the balking machine that would cause this
non-recognition effect.

We've put together a more-or-less checklist for troubleshooting these rather
common USB non-recognition problems that (hopefully) may be of some value to
users encountering this type of problem...

1. Access Disk Management and see if the USB device is listed. If so, and
there's no drive letter assigned, see if you can assign a drive letter to
the device.
2. If the USB device is listed in Disk Management with an assigned drive
letter, right-click on its listing and select Explore from the submenu.
Hopefully, Windows Explorer will open and the device will be listed.
3. Connect the USB device *directly* to a USB port on the computer, not via
a USB hub. Try different USB ports should your computer have multiple ports.
4. Avoid using a USB extension cable.
5. Try connecting a USB device (that does not contain an auxiliary power
supply) to a USB port both before and after the boot operation.
6. Where a USB (or Firewire) external HDD is involved, access Device
Manager, highlight the Disk drives listing and click on the Action menu item
and then the "Scan for hardware changes" sub-menu item. Do the same in Disk
Management > Action > Rescan disks.
7. Try alternate powering on/off methods. If the USB device contains its own
power supply, try booting up with its power on, then try powering on only
*after* the system has booted to a Desktop.
8. Try a different USB cable.
9. In the USB controllers section of Device Manager, uninstall all the USB
controllers listed and reboot.
10. If the device in question is not a commercial USB external HDD but
rather one in which you installed a HDD in a USB enclosure, jumper the HDD
as Master (or Single if the HDD is a Western Digital disk). A number of
users have reported that jumper configuration corrected their
non-recognition problem. In my own experience it didn't seem to matter how a
USB external HDD was jumpered. But it may be worth a try.

In theory, it shouldn't make one whit of difference how a HDD is jumpered
within a USB device, but we've come across more than a few reports where the
user indicated a jumper change on the HDD resolved the problem.
11. If the device in question is a USB external HDD, first check out the HDD
with the hard drive manufacturer's diagnostic utility. If it checks out OK,
and you can remove the HDD from its enclosure (without voiding any
applicable warranty), do so and install the HDD as an internal HDD to
determine if there are problems with the drive.
12. If the USB device is connected to a USB 2.0 PCI card, try changing the
PCI slot to which it's currently connected to another one.
13. Access the website of the manufacturer of the USB device to determine if
there's any firmware update or info re the problem you're experiencing or
there's any possibility that the USB enclosure itself might be defective.
14. Determine from the manufacturer of your motherboard whether there's a
BIOS upgrade affecting USB device recognition.

Finally, I fully realize that you've probably tried most, if not all, of the
above suggestions as it relates to your specific problem involving the
non-recognition of your USBEHD and still "no go", but I thought I would list
the above for (possibly) the benefit of others.
Anna
 
If an 8 GB drive is working it is probably the size of the drive not being
compatible with the enclosure limitation. Seems that many enclosures that
are older (as I said in my original post) have specific bios that limit the
size of drives they support just like older computers won't support larger
drives.

It doesn't matter the manufacturer of the drive as the pin specifications
for one manufacturer's IDE drive has to be the same as another
manufacturer's pin specifications. (Granted, years ago there was drive
incompatibilities between two different manufacturer's drives on one IDE
channel.)

Since you said the drive works internally, there is nothing wrong with the
drive. Has to be the enclosure.
 
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