Problems with Ultra IDE

[Raje]

Uhoh..... looks like I ran heasd first into a lil problem. I purchased an Ultra IDE hardrive to use in a external enclosure. I don't think the enclosure is suited for an Ultra Drive... the cable inside looks like a standard 40 wire cable , and I have learned that the Ultra drives need specialized 80 wire cable.

Does this mean that I can't use this drive until I get the right cable?? I think my round IDE's are 80 wire... they might be but i'm doubting it since I tried switching the cables around a bit.

Can it be that my MOBO does not support the hardware? I will be kinda upset since I would have an almost useless drive that has cost my about $150.00 by now.

Here are liks to the drive and enclosure.. If I stick an older drive into the enclosure it works in seconds.. So I'm assuming I've narrowed down the issue to 2 possibilities. Either my PC cannot handle the Ultra Drive or I somehow need to "make" an 80 wire cable the is 3cm long. I'll include some pics in a bit too.

EDIT--- Maybe I should just get an enclosure that is Ultra IDE compliant since I'd also like to use Firewire instead of USB 2.0

Enclosure: http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N82E16817155505
Hard drive: http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N82E16822144392
MOBO: is listed as a [font=Arial, san-serif, Verdana, Helvetica][font=Verdana, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif]Trigem GL VE 2002052 on the HP site but I do not believe this is the correct one.
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[muckshifter]

More than likely the "jumper" is set to 'cable select' and not master ... set the HD to master.

An 80 wire cable just has extra sheilding ... it should not matter if you use a 'normal' cable instead, although it is best to use the right cable for the right job. However, some of them 'propriety' PC's can be a little picky.

For future reference, always look for Hi-Speed USB2 external devices ... USB 2 comes in 3 flavours.

 

[Raje]

Thank you for your responces Mucks... at this point I have changed the jumper to all settings. Master, Slave and CS. If I use Master or Slave I will get an error and it says that there was a problem installing your hardware and it may not work. If I use cable select it actaully brings up the name of the drive in the little popup during install and then the baloon says that your hardware has been installed and is ready to use. But there is no extra drive in My Computer. Also I've RMAed this drive last time for the same issues. If I plug this drive into the Tower is is not regognised either.

 

[muckshifter]

If I plug this drive into the Tower is is not regognised either

ah, now then ... Is HP being a funny bugger or what?

 

[Raje]

I don't know... I'm at a loss here... Here is what i don't get... When I plugged the drive into the tower I had it as a slave.. and my current HD as master... when I booted the pc it asked for me to insert boot media... so I swopped locations on the cable (though I thought it shouldn't matter if the swtiched were set so) and rebooted. It booted up fine but did not pick up the second drive. I did not bother to see if I could make it the only drive and put an os on it... I don't really want to... it was just supposed to be mass storage that I would rarely even search.

I'm hopeing at this point the answer is simple and I'm being dumb.. and one of you can just point it out.

 

[muckshifter]

Nope, you're not being dumb ...

BIOS set to auto detect?

Internal drive as master ... new drive as slave (if fitted in the PC) ... done! The cable, if an 80wire should be 'black' to master, middle 'grey' to slave ... and you know where the other end goes.

... that is all you really need to do ... if it is still not being 'seen' then HP are the doughnuts.

 

[Raje]

(e-mail address removed)#*! HP!! So basically I'm stuck with a perfectly good.. unusable drive?

 

[muckshifter]

Well I hope not Raje ... I just noticed its a 320giger. Sorry.

The 'problem' would more stem from it being a 320gig HD and HP inability to 'see' it all ... see if WD have a partioning tool or something.

I'll see if I can't dig up summit.

 

[Raje]

Thanks Mucks... I'm gonna browsr through the WD site and see if this is common.

 

[Raje]

Well after pestering all the peeps at my job... we are starting to think that I may need to update my BIOS, to recognise such a large drive. As far as the partioning tool.. well I should have a partition magic disk aroung here somewhere.... or I will just have to obtain one.

Also.. The enclosure had the normal belt cable insided of it... if I "make" a small Ultra cable for the enclosure will it boost transfer speeds?? Or am I bottlenecked at the USB 2.0 speed?

 

[muckshifter]

Well after pestering all the peeps at my job... we are starting to think that I may need to update my BIOS, to recognise such a large drive. As far as the partioning tool.. well I should have a partition magic disk aroung here somewhere.... or I will just have to obtain one.

Also.. The enclosure had the normal belt cable insided of it... if I "make" a small Ultra cable for the enclosure will it boost transfer speeds?? Or am I bottlenecked at the USB 2.0 speed?

As long as you aint gonna run movies of the drive in the caddy then yes, make a cable up ... used to do that myself when we first started having tower cases.

Check with HP that a BIOS update will 'fix' the problem ... no point if it don't.

Even if partitioned, it may still have trouble being seen, but that will be an easy option if it works.

 

[Raje]

YEA BABY!!! I downloaded the DATA LIFEGUARD software from WD site. Opened the program up and in half a second it has a popup saying it has detected a drive which has not yet been configured for this system, would you like to install this hardware. 2 seconds later the drive is installed and I can see it in "My Computer." Now lets stick the drive in the enclosure and then see what happens. Wish me luck....

EDIT: BOOYAH!!! I stuck the drive into the enclosure popped the jumper to CS (recomended by enclosure manfact.) and I now own a 320GB External drive... well it actually reads at 298 GB but i'm not complaining.
THANK YOU!!!

 

[muckshifter]

Another happy customer ...



Sorted ... well done Raje.