Help needed with USB 2.0 external hard drive

[Arklier]

I bought an external hard drive enclosure and 320GB Seagate IDE hard
drive to back up my data before I did a mobotherboard/CPU upgrade and
had to reinstall Windows. This particular enclosure has both USB 2.0
and ethernet connections so you can use it as network storage. I
couldn't get the computer to recognize the USB connection, but when
connected to the network directly it could format the drive, set up
folders, do pretty much anything so I know it's not the drive. Not
wanting to mess around with it, I just uploaded my files via the
network or moved them to my second internal hard drive and did the
upgrade.

Now the same thing is happening with the new mobo, though. I have
Windows XP Home SP2, and when I plug the USB connection in, it comes up
with the Found New Hardware Wizard in the system tray, pops up a little
yellow window that says "USB Mass Storage Device" and then after a
second that goes away and "IDE to USB" comes up and goes away, and
finally it comes up with the message that says there was a problem with
installation and the hardware may not work properly. The drive does not
show up in My Computer, and there are no question marks or exclamation
points in Device Manager. If I plug in my 1GB USB thumb drive, it works
fine. Anyone have any suggestions?

 

[LVTravel]

What is the make of the hard drive enclosure? If I am not
mistaken this is a cheaper version of Network attached
storage (NAS) that is now for sale in Sam's, Costco, Circuit
City, etc.

I have a SimpleTech, SimpleShare unit that has both the USB
port and the Network attachment. What this type of drive is
used for is for additional storage for a network. The USB
port is to allow you to attach a separate USB 2.0 drive to
increase the size of the NAS without purchasing another NAS.
(BTW, on my NAS, when I hooked up another USB device, it
totally corrupted the data on that USB drive.)

You need to read the manual that came with your drive to see
if this is the type of device I have stated.