USB EXTERNAL HD CADDY CONUNDRUM!!!

  • Thread starter Thread starter dozzell
  • Start date Start date
D

dozzell

Heres the thing...

A friend has leant me a 3.5" HDD External caddy with a 30gb Maxtor HDD
in it, although he's only put it together and never used it.

Most of the time it shows up OK in device manager under Disk Drives (as
Maxtor USB Device), but it never shows up in My Computer or Disk
Management, so I cant use it, format it or even assign a drive letter.

On rare occasions I get the dumb Balloon saying "Device not
Recognized".

How do I get it to show up in My Computer or Disk Management?

Other Info...
The caddy is plugged directly to the computer, not through a hub.
The caddy has an independant power supply which IS working and spinning
the disk.
The green LED is lit on the fromt of the caddy to suggest constant
activity.
The computer is a laptop so I havnt got a spare IDE cable hanging
around to try the HDD on.
The HDD (im told) used to be on a network and is NTFS format.
Ive tried all jumper positions (master, slave and cable select) and
still no joy.

Discus!
 
You are using a home brew combination of a hard drive in an external
enclosure. This combination wasn't even tested by the person who put it
together. How do you know, for a fact, that it will work on "any" computer?
He should have tested it before he gave it to you. Alternatively, try it on
another computer. If it still doesn't work, ask him nicely to find out why.

--
Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User
(For email, remove the obvious from my address)

Quote from George Ankner:
If you knew as much as you think you know,
You would realize that you don't know what you thought you knew!
 
Um, Thanks?

I never said it would work on "any" computer, so not really sure what
your getting at, apart from 'give it back to him'? Sorry.

I have tested it on a neighbours computer, exactly the same thing
happens. I have noticed that, under properties (from device manager) it
says there is no driver installed, but then under the 'driver' tab, it
has a generic microsoft driver listed.
When I try to update the driver, even with the 'connect to the
internet' option, it cant find a better driver than the one ive already
got. Weird.
 
My reference to "any computer" was made because you did not indicate that
you had tried to use the combination on another computer.

Now you say you did, and have the same problem. Does that tell you
anything - like it was not put together correctly?

If you buy a manufactured external hard drive, they just work.

--
Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User
(For email, remove the obvious from my address)

Quote from George Ankner:
If you knew as much as you think you know,
You would realize that you don't know what you thought you knew!
 
Heres the thing...

A friend has leant me a 3.5" HDD External caddy with a 30gb Maxtor HDD
in it, although he's only put it together and never used it.

Most of the time it shows up OK in device manager under Disk Drives (as
Maxtor USB Device), but it never shows up in My Computer or Disk
Management, so I cant use it, format it or even assign a drive letter.

On rare occasions I get the dumb Balloon saying "Device not
Recognized".

How do I get it to show up in My Computer or Disk Management?

Other Info...
The caddy is plugged directly to the computer, not through a hub.
The caddy has an independant power supply which IS working and spinning
the disk.
The green LED is lit on the fromt of the caddy to suggest constant
activity.
The computer is a laptop so I havnt got a spare IDE cable hanging
around to try the HDD on.
The HDD (im told) used to be on a network and is NTFS format.
Ive tried all jumper positions (master, slave and cable select) and
still no joy.

Discus!
Click to expand...

Sounds like the USB bus and ide interface are working per the "Maxtor USB
device" in device manager. Probably communicating with the firmware on the
hard drive. But unable to determine possible CHS parameters though. Disk
management can't do anything with it at that point. That is, the hard drive
tells XP its name, but that's it.

I'd try swapping in a different known working hard drive that has no
important data on it.
 
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