Problems with an external hard drive

  • Thread starter Thread starter James Wilson
  • Start date Start date
J

James Wilson

Hi,

I recently purchased a FireTrek Ruggedized Portable Hard
Disk Drive 20Gb which use Firewire to connect to my laptop.

However, I am having difficulty in getting it to work.

I cannot see the device in "My Computer" (i.e. as a
seperate drive) and therefore cannot transfer data to it.

However, my computer does seem to pick up the device as a
Disk Drive (I can find the device by right clicking on the
a:drive and looking at Properties/Hardware ).

There seems to be some kind of hardware conflict between
my disk drive and the new hard drive?

What should I do to resolve this problem?

Many thanks,

James Wilson
 
I suggest you go to Start->Control Panel-.Admin Tools-> Computer
Mngmnt->Disk Mngmnt and make sure the drive is identified there. If it
isn't you likely have a driver problem but from your post the likelyhood is
it will show there. If it is showing now go to 'Action -> All Tasks' and
format the drive and allocate a drive letter then reboot. That should do
it.
 
Thanks for the advice.

I had a look under Disk Mgmt. but the external drive was
not found.

Looks like I do have a driver problem. How do I address
this i.e. what driver am I looking for (the external hard
drive isn't supposed to need one according to the
manufacturer!)? Any ideas?
 
So as not to have any misunderstandings, how are you connecting the firewire
drive to your machine with a six pin or a 4 pin connector? As you are
connecting to your laptop I assume it is a four pin connector, that is a
small connector not the same as the connector to the drive which will be a
six pin connector. If it is, as I think probable a four pin connector how
are you supplying power to the drive? Are you using a USB port for power or
do you have and external power supply? The pont is are you sure the drive
is powered up and the indicator light on the drive is on? (I think all
drive enclosures have a power indicator).

Assuming the drive is powered, go to Device Manager (Start->Control
Panel->System->Device Manager) and locate IEEE 1394 Bus Host Controller
click that and delete Texas Instruments OHCI Compliant IEEE1394 Host
Controller and reboot. The controller will reload and with luck your drive
will be recognised under Disk Management.

Clearly if the device is not powered then this is the first thing you must
rectify. I power my drive from a USB port but some enclosures do come with
their own power bricks.

Hope it works for you.
 
I am connecting the external harddrive through the i.Link
port on my Sony Laptop (I have also used a cardbus to link
it through a Firewire port). I am powering the drive via
a converter that plugs into the mouse port of my laptop -
the drive is powered as indicated by a green light at the
front of the device.

I tried out your advice to unistall the Host Controller
but it still didnt work!

I have scanned the net for drivers with no luck and the
manufacturers are radio silent! It looks like I may have
to give up and flog the damn thing on eBay!

Thanks for your help - much appreciated.

Cheers,

James
 
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