External USB 2.0 Drives

I bought two Enermax 2.5'' USB 2.0 drive enclosures and two Toshiba 60GB laptop drives for a customer. I put the drives in the enclosure and plugged one of them in. The drive didn't show in Disk Manager. I thought I might need to format 1st so I hooked up the drive with an 2.5 to 3.5 ide converter. The drive shows and I formatted and put back in the enclosure. When I try to transfer data to the drive I get "Cannot Copy: filename. Connot find the specified file. Make sure you specify the correct path and file name."

Both enclosures do this. I Thought it might be my install of XP gone bad, so I loaded up an old drive with XP sp1 and tried it. Same thing.

Do I have two bad enclosures or am I missing something?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by jimmm33

I bought two Enermax 2.5'' USB 2.0 drive enclosures and two Toshiba 60GB laptop drives for a customer. I put the drives in the enclosure and plugged one of them in. The drive didn't show in Disk Manager. I thought I might need to format 1st so I hooked up the drive with an 2.5 to 3.5 ide converter. The drive shows and I formatted and put back in the enclosure. When I try to transfer data to the drive I get "Cannot Copy: filename. Connot find the specified file. Make sure you specify the correct path and file name."

Both enclosures do this. I Thought it might be my install of XP gone bad, so I loaded up an old drive with XP sp1 and tried it. Same thing.

Do I have two bad enclosures or am I missing something?

---

my guess would probably be that the drives are not getting enough juice in the enclosures. . . . . I went through pretty much the same thing. I had an enclosure and it would work fine with smaller drives but the larger drive I had 20GB just wasn't getting enough juice even passing through the ps2 connection.

Well I RMA'd the enclosures.

I really need two models that work well. Does anyone have a recommendation of an enclosure? Preferably, models available from newegg?

The machine I am using is an Asus A7N8X Deluxe. I did some digging and found some problems with USB drives and this board. Here for example:

http://www.ocia.net/reviews/usbext/K...External.shtml

Can anyone confirm this? Did I just RMA enclosures for the wrong reason? Will they work for my customer? I don't think the customer has and Nforce2 board.

I would like to either order new enclosures or cancel the RMA by morning. I am going to set up another machine with a different chipset to see what happens.

Someone please give me some input.

I found this:

http://www.everythingusb.com/forums/...hlight=nforce2

It seems there is an incompatibility with the Nforce2 chipset and the gl811usb chipset. I updated the BIOS and mobo drivers. Sure enough, the Enermax enclosures have that chipset.

Here the million dollar question.

What enclosures DONT have that chipset?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by jimmm33

I bought two Enermax 2.5'' USB 2.0 drive enclosures and two Toshiba 60GB laptop drives for a customer. I put the drives in the enclosure and plugged one of them in. The drive didn't show in Disk Manager. I thought I might need to format 1st so I hooked up the drive with an 2.5 to 3.5 ide converter. The drive shows and I formatted and put back in the enclosure. When I try to transfer data to the drive I get "Cannot Copy: filename. Connot find the specified file. Make sure you specify the correct path and file name."

Both enclosures do this. I Thought it might be my install of XP gone bad, so I loaded up an old drive with XP sp1 and tried it. Same thing.

Do I have two bad enclosures or am I missing something?

---

I would highly recommend getting a case with both USB and Firewire connections and use the Firewire connection when ever possible. Firewire is a lot better for hard drives, it supplies more power, can be daisy chained so one port can serve many drives, Win98 and up has built in driver support and almost always transfers data faster then USB 2.0. I have a Compucable FireXpress 250DX and am vary happy with it. The plastic case opens easy without tools and holds at least a 12.5mm thick drive, if you swap drives often that helps. The Aluminum FireXpress 250SDX is slimmer (up to 9.5mm drives) if it that serves you better.
http://www.compucable.com/firewire/e...usb2_body.html
http://fwdepot.com/thestore/product_...roducts_id/621
Hitachi Travelstar drives have a utility called "Feature Tool" that gives users direct control over the Advanced Battery Life Extender power settings. This has made mine work without a power supply on all controllers I've tried, but I've haven't tried an Nforce2 yet.
http://www.hgst.com/hdd/library/apm.htm
http://www.hgst.com/hdd/library/able.htm

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by kato2274

my guess would probably be that the drives are not getting enough juice in the enclosures. . . . . I went through pretty much the same thing. I had an enclosure and it would work fine with smaller drives but the larger drive I had 20GB just wasn't getting enough juice even passing through the ps2 connection.

---

Mmmm ... so use a powered usb hub ? maybe here too ? ... how much are they $10-15 ish ? ...

I had a similar problem with my external (no-name) usb drive. Turned out I had the jumper settings wrong and it was possibly compromised because the usb port was a 1.1 and once I installed a 2.0 card things were fine.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by confus-ed

Mmmm ... so use a powered usb hub ? maybe here too ? ... how much are they $10-15 ish ? ...

---

For USB 1.0 yes. The 2.0 ones I've seen start at about $30 bucks...

hello,

i've got a presario 2500, win xp (home) and an external Chronos HD-337-Combo (usb2 & firewire).

I've got no problems with usb2 (i have a pcmcia usb2.0 card).

But firewire doesn't detect!

Can someone help?

Welcome to Windrivers Brian Wilson

In device manager, what do you have for 1394 ohci devices? Firewire is onboard the laptop or on the pcmcia card?

Some makes of external drive require external power as well. have you read this?

Hi,

In device manager i have:

IEEE 1394 Bus host controllers
.......Texas Instruments OHCI Compliant IEEE 1394 Host Controller


The firewire is from the laptop.

thanks

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by kato2274

my guess would probably be that the drives are not getting enough juice in the enclosures. . . . . I went through pretty much the same thing. I had an enclosure and it would work fine with smaller drives but the larger drive I had 20GB just wasn't getting enough juice even passing through the ps2 connection.

---

I have had a similar problems but I solved it with enclosure that has its own power supply. it seems that Amper level from within the USB socket are very limited. I had the problems even with IOMEGA external USB Hdd.

Cheers,
Gabriel

brian did you understand the bit about needing external power?

Hi,

yes. fyi it's a chronos enclosure model HD-337-Combo and it's got its own external power.

using usb2 is no problems on it.

FYI, the firewire cable has the fat end on the enclosure and the thin (4pin?) end for the laptop.

cheers

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by NooNoo

brian did you understand the bit about needing external power?

---

I've had several USB external enclosures. The first was a combo USB HD/MP3 player called a RooPaq. (Usb 1.1) This unit was self powered, and I never had any problems with it.

My next enclosure was a an ION enclosure usb2 from IOGEAR, which I installed at least 3 different 2.5" drives in at different times. This unit could be powered by the USB port alone, but I found it could be under powered easily, esp. by usb hubs (even powered ones.) It also came with a cable to pull power from a PS/2 port, which was often needed. I should point out that it was obvious that some drives did better with power requirements than others.

I also now have 2 5.25 usb2/firewire units I grabbed for work that have been great. They do need A/C power, but perform flawlessly 100% of the time. Got them at Comp USA on sale - Manufacturer name was "Acom Data" - basic looking enclosure, came with western digital drives. I love em here at work, been using them to do installs, ghost machines, etc on all kind of machines here usuing both usb 1 & 2 modes. Never had a problem yet.

The only culprit I've ever run across with using external drives, is the under-powering of the unit when relying on the usb port alone for power. That can result in a bunch of symptoms from the obvios (drive not spinning up completely) to the odd, (problems occasionally on writes, sometimes scrambled data.)

I should note that I have also ran into the under powered problem using USB memory drives. (once causing total loss of the existing data)

Bottom line, make sure you port is supplying enough power, or use an a/c or ps/2 power adapter.


Caprel :thumbs:

Brian checklist

Device manager, 1394 host adapter is showing up with no !

Does the hard drive appear in device manager

Does the hard drive appear in computer management

Do you have all the windows updates?

I also have the HD-337-COMBO drive case and have the same problem. When I initially plugged the unit into the firewire port, it recognised the drive, installed the drivers and started them but I could not access the drive - it did not appear in explorer or in direve management.

I uninstalled and reinstalled the drivers and now they cannot start. I have rebooted and still no change.

The installed drivers are:

Disk Drives: 1394 to IDE 1394 external IEEE 1394 SBP2 Device
SBP2 IEEE 1394 Devices: SBP2 Compliant IEEE 1394 device
IEEE 1394 Bus host controllers: OHCI Compliant IEEE 1394 Host Controller

I am running Windows XP SP2.

I have tried this on my desktop machine with a PCI 1394 adapter and also on my Dell Laptop with built-in 1394 support.

Any additional help would be much appreciated ...

Some additional info ...

I now have the drivers starting and appearing to work correctly but I still can't 'see' the drive. If I go into the 1394 to IDE 1394 external IEEE 1394 SBP2 Device properties, select the Volumes tab and click Populate I get:

Disk: Disk 2
Type: Unknown
Status: Unreadable
Partition Style: Not Applicable
Capacity: 0 Mb
Unallocated Space: 0 Mb
Reserved Space 0 Mb

Welcome to Windrivers phila

It wasn't clear from your first post whether the drive worked on the dell laptop.... if it didn't the drive is suspect.

Is the drive partitioned and formatted? Are the motherboard drivers installed correctly?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by NooNoo

Welcome to Windrivers phila

It wasn't clear from your first post whether the drive worked on the dell laptop.... if it didn't the drive is suspect.

Is the drive partitioned and formatted? Are the motherboard drivers installed correctly?

---

The drive works fine when connected to USB 1.0 or 2.0 but isn't recognised when connected via Firewire. I'm beginning to suspect that the Firewire side of the external case is unserviceable but I don't know whether there is a different circuit for USB and Firewire or whether they are an integral system.

All other Firewire devices work correctly on both the desktop and laptop systems.

Hi... I have a little problem with the drive that i said in subject...
The computer cannot recognize usb 2.0, but i don't know why... When i bought the box 2.5, in store it works perfectly, but in home anda work, it doesn't works... can anyone help me???

Why not just get an external drive with its own power supply and avoid the enclosure problems.

I use external drives, maxtor 1touch 300gb and one from compusa 80gb.
Both are usb and firewire and work fine.