External USB 2.0 Drives

**Carpel** · July 13th, 2004, 09:39 PM

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

**NooNoo** · July 14th, 2004, 06:05 AM

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?

**phila** · August 15th, 2004, 07:59 AM

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 ...

**phila** · August 15th, 2004, 08:05 AM

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

**NooNoo** · August 16th, 2004, 04:18 AM

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?

**phila** · August 16th, 2004, 08:12 AM

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.

**Jorginho** · November 24th, 2005, 07:20 AM

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???

**travistee** · November 25th, 2005, 02:25 PM

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.