I am trying to install a new extrernal hard drive and receiving a whole lot of problems... It is an internal 3.5" Western Digital 250gb hard drive, and I bought an Adaptec USB 2.0 hard drive enclosure kit. I am confident I assembled it correctly, and it says right on the box of the enclosure kit that it is appropriate for Western Digital Hard drives and for hard drives up to 1000 Gb... When I plug it in and try it with a new usb port, the "found new hardware" icon pops up in my system tray, and it identitifies it as usb to ide controller, and as a usb storage device, but then it says the device did not install properly. If I go into the add hardware wizard it cannot find the hardware at all. The install cd comes with .inf files and drivers, but they are intended for win98se (and the instructions say to only install drivers if using win98se, otherwise just plugf and play). I used them during the add new hardware wizard, though, because that was the only way the computer would locate the device at all... Once again, after installing (the "USB Stprage device"), it said it did not install correctly because there was "no function driver specified for this instance". I tried this install both using a usb hub as well as a direct usb card, and the same problem occurred every single time. The hardware does not even appear in my Device Manager. What should I do??? I have done a search and the adaptec website has no mention of the device not working, any advice? I havent even been able to format the hard drive yet... The hard dirve is set to slave as per the instructions, and the enclosure is indicating that it is on, and I already opened it up and ensure everything was hooked up properly. One other bit of useful info may be that during the add new hardware wizard, when using the inf files located on cd, the wizard said they were not windows logo tested and to be cautious about using them, though i am guessing that has to do with the fact that they are intended for use with a win98se OS...

http://www.usbman.com/forum/UltraBoard.cgi?SID=10

If it were me, I would put the hard drive in a computer on a ide cable to see if it works. If it does take back the Adaptec enclosure.

Thanks for the ideas... After a quick search of the forums listed above, the only advice I could find was that USB enclosures should always be set to "cable select" although the instructions with my adaptec enclosure specificlaly say master. however, it is worth a try. Attaching the HDD to an internal ide cable is the next step, I guess, I just really do not want to have to go through that and I am not actually sure if I have the physical space in ym computer... I have 2 hdds in there now, and i am not sure what i have for free space inside... this was bought bexcause i am going to study abroad for 5 months and i am bringing a laptop which does not have a large HDDD, but it is borrowed and instead of upgrading someone elses laptop i decided to buy this, so once i return i can just pop it onto my machine. however, right now i am working off of my machine, not the laptop, and i wanted to get it working here first, because i have some files i need to store on it. So i guess the next step is switching the HD to cable select, and then scouring the above forum a little more indepth, and then trying it internally. Anyone else have similar problems wiht this device? I have read about other people getting the same error message, but never wiht this device, and all of the fixes people have offered have been device specific... thanks Tsultrim

I switched the HDD to Cable select, and it seems to be working fine... that was advice garnered from the above link... Much thanks! It is important to note that Adaptec's instructions say to use Master... so anyone else that ever comes across a similar problem now knows that they shoudl disregard the flawed Adaptec instructions... Thanks again!