USB Mass storage Device not showing up in windows 2000

[Al Start]

I have a Western Digital 160 gig hard drive that I
installed in a coolmax external enclosure , the enclosure
says it is compatible with 1.1. and 2.0 usb. My xp windows
machine recognizes the hard drive which I formated from
the 2000 windows machine, however my 2000 machine will not
recognize it under my computer.It does show up in device
manager under drives with model # and srial # and also
under usb as "mass Storage Device" there are no
explanation marks assosiated with the device and the
trouble shooting guide indicates it is working properly. I
have reinstalled drivers several times with no luck. other
usb devices that I have hooked up woork ok. Coolmax ( the
people who make the box) do not respond to my questions.
The easy solution I think would be to upgrade to XP
however that would not explain why the plug and play
function is not working with 2000 in this situation.
Thanks for any help....Al

 

[Bob I]

The web site does not mention USB1.1 for the enclosures, only 2.0 and
firewire. Do you suppose the USB 1.1 support is rather "iffy" and thats
why there is no mention of it any more? Personally, I would install a
USB 2.0 card and go that route, considerable speed increase over 1.1.

 

[Guest]

Bob, Thanks for the USB 2.0 card tip . I'll give that one
a try... Al

 

[Brian Smither]

I bought basically a no-name enclosure (uses a genesyslogic chip) for
laptop-size hard drives to connect via USB 1.1/2.0 connection. I
installed the driver (which was actually just an INF file).

I plug it in and Windows 2003 Server says it found new hardware. It took
about three/four minutes to get everything straight.

*Maybe* if I rebooted, the partitions on the laptop hard drive would get
automatically assigned drive letters and they would show up in My
Computer. But I didn't reboot and even if I did, I doubt it would have
worked that way. USB devices come online after Windows finds BIOS
settable devices and sets or resets drive letters (CD-RW to drive X, for
example).

But in the Adminstrative Tools, Computer Management, Drive Manager, I
found the drive and with the Manager I was able to assign drive letters
or mount the volumes to an existing NTFS Mount Point. Pretty cool, those
mount points.

Brian Smither
Smither Consulting