USB Disk not visible in Explorer and Computer Management

[Guest]

Hello

I bought a HardBox Portable HDD (FHD-354) enclosure from Sarotech. I
installed my 3.5" Samsung SP1604N 160G ATA Drive in it. Now I'm trying to
connect the drive to my PC running Windows XP Media Center Edition Version
2002 Service Pack 2.

When I connect the drive it is recognized and installed, however the drive
is not visible in Windows Explorer and does also not show up in Disk
Management.

In the Device Manager the Disk shows up as "Samsung 1604N USB Device" in
Disk Drives. No question mark, no exclamation mark. Therefore I assume the
drive is installed correctly. When clicking on the "Safely Remove Hardware"
icon the hard drive shows up as USB Mass storage device. In the hardware
devices overview window of "Safely Remove Hardware" the disk also shows up as
Samsung SP1604N USB Device. RIght cklicking on it and opening it properties
it says:
- under General tab: This device is working properly
- under volumes tab: everything is empty, it only shows the following
information when I click on "Populate":
- Disk: Disk 3
- Type: Unknown
- Status: Unreadable
- Partition Style: not applicable
- Capacity: 0 MB
- Unallocated Space: 0 MB
- Reserved Space: 0MB

The disk is working fine if I use it as internal drive. I also reformatted
it to be FAT32 instead of NTFS.

I googled for the issue, tried a dozen of tips from other newgroups and
spent hours becoming more and more frustrated with out making the thing work.
It won't show up in Disk Management and WIndows Explorer.

Anyone has an idea how to fix the issue? THX in advance.

 

[Drew Tognola]

Mad Maxx,

If you have 'TweakUI for XP', select 'My Computer > Drives, check the box
next to the Drive letter associated with the new Hard Drive.

Download TweakUI: http://windowsxp.mvps.org/admins.htm (use the 'v2.10 for
XP SP1 and above' link)

Drew

 

[Guest]

Hello Drew

Thanks for the tip. Unfortunately it does not solve my issue. The drive has
no drive letter assigned, not in Tweak UI nor in Disk Management. It is not
visible except in the Device Manager and in Safely Remove Hardware.
--
Regards

Mad Maxx

Mad Maxx,

If you have 'TweakUI for XP', select 'My Computer > Drives, check the box
next to the Drive letter associated with the new Hard Drive.

Download TweakUI: http://windowsxp.mvps.org/admins.htm (use the 'v2.10 for
XP SP1 and above' link)

Drew

 

[Drew Tognola]

I'm sorry to say I'm not familiar with Pendrives, sorry.

Drew

Hello Drew

Thanks for the tip. Unfortunately it does not solve my issue. The drive
has
no drive letter assigned, not in Tweak UI nor in Disk Management. It is
not
visible except in the Device Manager and in Safely Remove Hardware.

 

[Glen]

In an external enclosure it is best to set the jumpers on the drive as
"cable select".

 

[Malke]

In an external enclosure it is best to set the jumpers on the drive as
"cable select".

Actually with most external hard drives, you want to set the jumper to
"master", not "cable select". Also, is the hard drive formatted?

Malke

 

[Guest]

Thanks again for the tips. The manual clearly states that all drives should
be configured as Master except for WesternDigital which should be configured
as single. As I use a Samsung drive I configured it as Master. Does not solve
the issue. (BTW I also tried slave, did not work either).

 

[Malke]

Thanks again for the tips. The manual clearly states that all drives
should be configured as Master except for WesternDigital which should
be configured as single. As I use a Samsung drive I configured it as
Master. Does not solve the issue. (BTW I also tried slave, did not
work either).

Then I don't know, sorry. Maybe the enclosure you bought doesn't work.
Try a different (formatted) drive in it and see what happens.

Malke

 

[Guest]

Will try, however I need to organize another ATA HDD first. All the others I
have are S-ATA. Thanks