Connecting new drive

[Guest]

Hi,

I recently purchased a Seagate Barracuda SATA2 320 gig hard drive which came
installed in a mediasonic external enclosure.I formatted the drive . I also
bought a best connectivity sata2 card with an external port which also
installed ok. Now my problem is, I cannot get my cables that came with the
hard drive/enclosure to work with my pci card. No instructions are provided
either. The cables I got are one long one with a 7-pin connector on each end,
and one shorter cable that I think is an adapter. I tried plugging these
cable together a few ways and attatching it to the hard drive and the card
but nothing works. Do I need different cables?

Thanks!

 

[Adam Albright]

Hi,

I recently purchased a Seagate Barracuda SATA2 320 gig hard drive which came
installed in a mediasonic external enclosure.I formatted the drive . I also
bought a best connectivity sata2 card with an external port which also
installed ok. Now my problem is, I cannot get my cables that came with the
hard drive/enclosure to work with my pci card. No instructions are provided
either. The cables I got are one long one with a 7-pin connector on each end,
and one shorter cable that I think is an adapter. I tried plugging these
cable together a few ways and attatching it to the hard drive and the card
but nothing works. Do I need different cables?

Thanks!

What KIND of cables, USB or SATA?

Tip: If you bought a new external SATA 2 drive and your motherboard
and BIOS FULLY support SATA, you probably will have to change things
in BIOS, perhaps download Vista drivers.

If you had some older SATA cables laying around, these don't work. The
standard calls for external SATA cables which have a different beefier
plug that pushes on a little further. If you didn't get these and
you're running a SATA2 connnection WAY faster than USB 2 then you can
find the right cables or adapters in large retail computer stores,
like Fry's, or on the web. You can also get backplanes that screw
into a empty external slot opening.

Nice closeup of the difference:

http://www.satacable.com/

 

[Guest]

Hi,

I am using the SATA cables that came with the drive and enclosure and cannot
get them to work. I don't know what kind of cables I need all I know is what
I have doesn't work, and my pci card says nothing about needing to buy
anything additional to attach my drive

 

[Adam Albright]

Hi,

I am using the SATA cables that came with the drive and enclosure and cannot
get them to work. I don't know what kind of cables I need all I know is what
I have doesn't work, and my pci card says nothing about needing to buy
anything additional to attach my drive

Lets backtrack a bit.

1. Are both ends of the cable you got the exact same?
2. Can you plug either end into your drive or controller card?
3. Do you have any SATA ports on our motherboard?

When I was researching the topic before I bought several external SATA
drives myself awhile back I read a couple articles where some vendor
put the wrong cables in the box by mistake. So that could have
happened.

It sounds like they gave you INTERNAL SATA cables. The only real
difference you can see is the connector often has a little metal band
running across it while internals don't always. If you have both a
internal and a external in your hand you can see the external variety
has a slightly deeper opening in the connector shell which allows it
to be pushed onto a SATA port just a fraction of a inch further. They
aren't interchangable.

The reason I asked if you have any SATA ports build into your MB is if
you can get your cable pushed into those without forcing, then for
sure you don't have the right cable.

 

[Guest]

HI,

Both ends of the cable are exactly the same and I can plug either end into
the drive enclosure and computer. I have sata on my motherboard but I am not
planning on using that as its only SATA1 and I want to use my SATA 2 drive ,
which is why I bought a SATA 2 pci card and installed it. Also, some other
cable came with this drive as I mentioned . These are not internal cables .

 

[Guest]

Should I try plugging the cable into the mobo?

Lets backtrack a bit.

1. Are both ends of the cable you got the exact same?
2. Can you plug either end into your drive or controller card?
3. Do you have any SATA ports on our motherboard?

When I was researching the topic before I bought several external SATA
drives myself awhile back I read a couple articles where some vendor
put the wrong cables in the box by mistake. So that could have
happened.

It sounds like they gave you INTERNAL SATA cables. The only real
difference you can see is the connector often has a little metal band
running across it while internals don't always. If you have both a
internal and a external in your hand you can see the external variety
has a slightly deeper opening in the connector shell which allows it
to be pushed onto a SATA port just a fraction of a inch further. They
aren't interchangable.

The reason I asked if you have any SATA ports build into your MB is if
you can get your cable pushed into those without forcing, then for
sure you don't have the right cable.

 

[Adam Albright]

Should I try plugging the cable into the mobo?

It is one way to see if the cables are internal or external. I haven't
seen a internal port yet that wasn't made to accept internal SATA
cables. You typically need a external rated SATA cable (also called
eSATA) to connect your external drive to some backplane which then
converts to internal SATA or plugs into some card. Even if your
internal SATA ports only run on SATA-1, at least you get to first
base. I'm responding to your original question where you said you
can't get the drive to work. It is either a cable problem or a driver
problem or perhaps a BIOS issue or Windows simply don't see them. Ihad
that problem myself and for now I'm just running them as USB 2.

 

[Guest]

Hi,

Thank you for all your help. It turns out all I had to do was plug in my
drive when it was off and the computer was off, then try booting up.
Everything is working fine