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I have two ATA hard drives (a 120Gb and a 400Gb) in external USB enclosers. I inherited a Gateway with a 320Gb SATA hard drive. When I hook the external drives to the computer via the USB ports, they show up in the device manager as USB Mass Storage Device. Yet, when I open My Computer, the drives partitions DO NOT show. I've hooked these up to other computers and they work just fine. The only difference I can tell is that the computers these work on have ATA drives and this one has SATA drive. Anyone know how I can get these to show on the Gateway?
Go into Control Panel, Administrative Tools, Computer Management, Disc manageer. See it the drives are there. Maybe it just a drive letter conflict. You can assign them a drive letter there if they are seen.
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One other possibility is the version of USB. Although USB is supposedly backward compatible I think some external USB enclosures need USB 2.0.
I doubt the SATA controllers have anything to do with the problem.
If WinXP is properly seeing the drives they should be identified not just as mass storage devices but as the make/ model of the actual drive. Might help to run the find new hardware wizard.
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Thank you both.
#1 The drives are identified by "make/model" in Disk drives and "USB Mass Storage Device" in Universal Serial Bus controllers.
#2 The enclosers and PC are USB 2.0.
#3 The drives do show up in Disk Management and I assigned drive letters to all partitions on both disks. They now show up and I can pull, add, delete files etc, etc.
Problem solved? YES and NO. I have to go back into Disk Management each time I restart my computer and assign drive letters again. Now I need a way to make them stick.
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When you use the tray icon to safely remove the drives how are they listed in that window. Mine is identified properly and there is ALSO the mass storage device listing.
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When I right click on icon it says:
"Safely Remove USB Mass Storage Device"
twice.On the old computer, I would leave the enclosers connected, shut down the computer, then turn off the drives. When I restart, I turn the drives on first then the computer and the drives would be there and work just as if they were internal.
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I would say that even though the drives are eventually seen you might want to install software for the enclosures, if you have any.
I have one 320GB in a large enclosure (5.25"). Doesn't matter if I boot with enclosure on or off and turn on later. Drive is always properly ID'ed and assigned the last available letter.
BTW, I have both SATA and PATA internal drives.
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No software came with the 3.5" enclosers. All it came with was a CD with drivers for Windows 98SE.
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When I first got the enclosure I have I was running Win98se. If I switched on the power to the enclosure prior to booting the drive was properly recognised, but that screwed up my drive letter assignment. So I used to turn on after a completed boot. Then I would need to unplug and replug the USB cable in order for the drive to be seen in 98. I never did figure out why. The only other thing I can think of is the manner in which the jumper is set on the drive. The directions accompanying the enclosure should state what they want. T know, it worked before but it is still worth mentioning. You never responded to my question about using the same USB controller for both drives. What happens if just one drive is plugged in? FYI, USB controllers usually feed TWO port for each controller.
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