External HDD (firewire) enclosure not recognised

[Guest]

I have experienced a problem with an HDD in an external Firewire enclosure.
It is recognised by my Sony Vaio Laptop but my two desktop PC's don't see it.
All are running Windows XP Home edition with SP2 and all are NTFS.
I experimented with another enclosure which has both USB2 and Firewire
options, and only when I use the USB connection can I get the desired result,
if I switch over to Firewire it fails.
Has anyone had this same experience and if so, did you find a solution?

 

[Richie NY]

Just a word of caution, make sure that when you
disconnect this HDD that you are utilizing the "Remove
Hardware" utility, if not going back and forth can damage
the drive very quickly.

For your issue, I suggest, plugging it into each PC while
the PC is powered down, boot up and let XP seek the drive
no matter what connector you use.

 

[Guest]

Richie,
I have tried this but the drive is not detected during the bootup procedure
on either of the desktops. However when I tried it on the Laptop it did find
a problem and corrected it through Scandisk. I thought this may have righted
it but when I tried the drive on the desktops they couldn't detect it.
I can still read the drive on the Laptop!

 

[wayne]

is the drive seen in disc manager? how about under hardware is firewire
working on the other PCs for a camera or some other device?
Have you tried updating the driver? Firewire drives are somewhat new/rare
you may want to make sure the cards you have installed will work Ok with the
size drive you have. I purchased a combo USB2/Firewire enclosure and put a
DVD burner in it and had problems with some features not working properly.
Using it under USB 2.0 solved the problems and according to Nero it was also
faster.

Wayne

 

[Guest]

Hi Wayne,
I can report that the firewire on both PC's are working fine. The drive to
which I refer is in an enclosure with firewire connection and, prior to this
recent refusal on the part of my systems to recognise it I had no problem. It
is only since I connected it to my laptop that things have gone wrong.
I realise that USB2 devices are known to work faster but I understand this
may have changed since Firewire 1394b was introduced. I could be wrong but in
the meantime I am quite happy to run on a USB2 connection, at least it works.
I would still like to understand why it doesn't seem to be recognised on my
PC's now, it is baffling and quite honestly I cannot accept failure!