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Author:

chadslink [ Mon Sep 17, 2012 4:48 pm ]

Post subject:

More I can't find you Problems

I had some old IDE hard drives that I wanted to have a look at to see if there is anything on them before I format them. Because these were fairly old drives, I put the drive in an external USB enclosure, plugged it into Windows XP Pro Computer, it found the drive and said it was ready to go. The problem is that XP does not show it under My Computer so I can't open it to look.

It shows up in the device manager and the properties also say it's good to go so why can't I see it?

Attachments:

usb4.jpg [ 81.42 KiB | Viewed 23432 times ]

Author:	sboots [ Mon Sep 17, 2012 5:04 pm ]
Post subject:	Re: More I can't find you Problems
Go to Disk/Storage Management under Administrative Tools. The drive probably needs to have a partition created on it. Another possibility, since it is in a USB enclosure is that it was assigned the same letter as another attached drive. If so, change the drive letter assignment in Disk/Storage Management. -steve

Author:	sboots [ Mon Sep 17, 2012 5:05 pm ]
Post subject:	Re: More I can't find you Problems
By the way, what are all those problem devices list under Unknown? You apparently need some drivers. -steve

Author:	chadslink [ Mon Sep 17, 2012 6:45 pm ]
Post subject:	Re: More I can't find you Problems
sboots wrote: By the way, what are all those problem devices list under Unknown? You apparently need some drivers. -steve The problem devices are those that Windows Wizard cannot find drivers for. I guess they are hidden under the rug somewhere. i tried getting them off the Windows XP PRO installation CD but the Windows guy can't find them on there either. Maybe thats the problem, all I have to do is get them.......

Author:	dvair [ Mon Sep 17, 2012 6:55 pm ]
Post subject:	Re: More I can't find you Problems
Those are mostly motherboard devices, did you run the drivers from the board's manufacturer? After that run the video drivers from the card manufacturer and you should be all set. You won't find them on the Windows CD.

Author:

chadslink [ Mon Sep 17, 2012 7:40 pm ]

Post subject:

Re: More I can't find you Problems

dvair wrote:

Those are mostly motherboard devices, did you run the drivers from the board's manufacturer? After that run the video drivers from the card manufacturer and you should be all set. You won't find them on the Windows CD.

Ok, I plugged the usb external hard drive into Windows 7 Pro......it does not have any yellow warnings, it says that Microsoft is the driver provider, and it still does not diplay this external usb drive under My Computer so your thoughts on what to do next?

Attachments:

usb7.jpg [ 107.25 KiB | Viewed 23417 times ]

Author:	sboots [ Mon Sep 17, 2012 8:12 pm ]
Post subject:	Re: More I can't find you Problems
The driver is not relevant - it is normal as you've pictured. Stick a brand new drive with no formatted partition in a PC and Windows will find it, but then you need to add a partition and format that partition for it to receive a drive letter. Did you go to Administrative Tools/Disk Management like I suggested? A drive with no active partition will not show up in Windows Explorer, but will show up in Device Manager. In Windows 7 - Administrative Tools/Computer management/Storage/Disk Management. -steve

Author:	sboots [ Mon Sep 17, 2012 8:13 pm ]
Post subject:	Re: More I can't find you Problems
dvair wrote: Those are mostly motherboard devices, did you run the drivers from the board's manufacturer? After that run the video drivers from the card manufacturer and you should be all set. You won't find them on the Windows CD. Yep. I suspect that they are all motherboard drivers, including the onboard video. -steve

Author:	chadslink [ Mon Sep 17, 2012 9:40 pm ]
Post subject:	Re: More I can't find you Problems
sboots wrote: The driver is not relevant - it is normal as you've pictured. Stick a brand new drive with no formatted partition in a PC and Windows will find it, but then you need to add a partition and format that partition for it to receive a drive letter. Did you go to Administrative Tools/Disk Management like I suggested? A drive with no active partition will not show up in Windows Explorer, but will show up in Device Manager. In Windows 7 - Administrative Tools/Computer management/Storage/Disk Management. -steve Yes, I did go there but cannot figure out what to do when I am in there. I get a box that pops up that says the disk is not initialized and when I click on "initialize disk", I get an error that it cannot do this because of an input/output error so I need more specific instructions on how to do that.

Author:	MacDuffie [ Mon Sep 17, 2012 9:50 pm ]
Post subject:	Re: More I can't find you Problems
If it will not initialize, then my guess is the drive is bad. It isn't a matter of knowing how to do it - Windows takes care of that if it can. And by the way, I do not think that device manager is so much displaying the drive, as the USB adapter - it is a USB device. Hard drives are not USB devices.

Author:	chadslink [ Mon Sep 17, 2012 10:25 pm ]
Post subject:	Re: More I can't find you Problems
MacDuffie wrote: If it will not initialize, then my guess is the drive is bad. It isn't a matter of knowing how to do it - Windows takes care of that if it can. And by the way, I do not think that device manager is so much displaying the drive, as the USB adapter - it is a USB device. Hard drives are not USB devices. Hi Ms MacDuffie.......I tried 5 hard drives and still get the same results and I find it hard to believe that all 5 of those drives are bad. They all start up and spin so I guess I can install them internally one at a time as slaves in a working computer and see if there is anything on them that I can use. I was trying to avoid that.

Author:	MacDuffie [ Mon Sep 17, 2012 10:35 pm ]
Post subject:	Re: More I can't find you Problems
Something wrong with your adapter? Those IDE/USB adapters are notoriously flakey.

Author:	chadslink [ Mon Sep 17, 2012 11:06 pm ]
Post subject:	Re: More I can't find you Problems
MacDuffie wrote: Something wrong with your adapter? Those IDE/USB adapters are notoriously flakey. I would have to agree about the IDE/USB adapters. I do have a Sata/USB and have been using it for some time now without incident. The plug is not very good on the IDE/USB adapters.....kinda sloppy but the Sata one is a very snug fit.

Author:	MacDuffie [ Tue Sep 18, 2012 12:40 am ]
Post subject:	Re: More I can't find you Problems
Yes, I'm very happy with the SATA docks that I have.

Author:	chadslink [ Tue Sep 18, 2012 1:08 am ]
Post subject:	Re: More I can't find you Problems
MacDuffie wrote: Yes, I'm very happy with the SATA docks that I have. I thought I had remembered my Sata USB adapter having an IDE as well and I was correct. It was currently installed as an external drive on my Windows 8 computer so I removed it and opened it up, removed the Sata Drive and installed the IDE Hard Drive that I had been unable to get opened and the minute I plugged it into the USB port on Windows 7 Pro, my Kaspersky anti- virus popped open and wanted to scan the drive. I clicked on No to the scan, and it opened right up displaying all the files on the drive...........so I think that means it was the USB adapter that was causing all the problems. I even plugged the external IDE/USB drive into the Windows XP Computer that has all the yellow question marks in the device manager and it opened right up in there too. I'm not sure what all those question marks in the device manager apply to because I seem to be able to do everything in XP, music, videos, pictures, even Movie Maker runs and plays videos.

Author:

chadslink [ Tue Sep 18, 2012 12:04 pm ]

Post subject:

Re: More I can't find you Problems

sboots wrote:

Go to Disk/Storage Management under Administrative Tools. The drive probably needs to have a partition created on it. Another possibility, since it is in a USB enclosure is that it was assigned the same letter as another attached drive. If so, change the drive letter assignment in Disk/Storage Management.
-steve

I'm still a bit mixed up on this because the IDE/USB Drive that was apparently defective did show under disk management that the drive in question was "all" unallocated space. As you recall, I was unable to make any changes to the drive, however, when I put it in another Sata-IDE/USB drive, it showed in disk management as having useable space as well as 8 mb as unallocated and I was able to view the content.

From time to time, I retire a computer but I always pull the drives out of them before they go off to a recycle center. Some of the drives are (C:) drives and others are (D:) (E:) (F:) drives so I have to assume that they were formatted originally and then set up with a partition and some unallocated space. So when I put those drives in the USB Drive Enclosures, I always change them to a slave drive. So, the question I have here is do they retain the status of partioned/unallocated space or the drive letter or ?

Attachments:

usbnonworks.jpg [ 59.29 KiB | Viewed 23393 times ]

Author:	sboots [ Tue Sep 18, 2012 1:04 pm ]
Post subject:	Re: More I can't find you Problems
Well, it sounds like you found the problem. The drive was being seen, but because of the IDE/USB adapter, the drive wasn't showing the partition and therefore the drive letter assignment(s) or files. -steve

Author:	sboots [ Tue Sep 18, 2012 1:06 pm ]
Post subject:	Re: More I can't find you Problems
By the way, when attaching an IDE drive via USB it is not a slave drive, as far as I know. It should probably be set as master. The USB adapter handles the assignment beyond that. The master/slave is for drives attached via a single cable to the IDE slot on the motherboard. -steve

Author:	chadslink [ Tue Sep 18, 2012 1:33 pm ]
Post subject:	Re: More I can't find you Problems
sboots wrote: By the way, when attaching an IDE drive via USB it is not a slave drive, as far as I know. It should probably be set as master. The USB adapter handles the assignment beyond that. The master/slave is for drives attached via a single cable to the IDE slot on the motherboard. -steve OK Steve.....some of these drives may have an operating system on them and thats why I made them slaves.

Author:	sboots [ Tue Sep 18, 2012 8:24 pm ]
Post subject:	Re: More I can't find you Problems
chadslink wrote: OK Steve.....some of these drives may have an operating system on them and thats why I made them slaves. Having an OS on the drive won't matter in a USB enclosure. It isn't typically bootable while attached via USB. The boot order is defined in BIOS. -steve

Author:	MacDuffie [ Tue Sep 18, 2012 8:44 pm ]
Post subject:	Re: More I can't find you Problems
Steve, I don't think he meant that he made them slaves for use with the USB adapter. I think these were old drives he may have dual-booted with, and that's why they had been set up as slaves. Correct me if I'm wrong.

Author:	chadslink [ Tue Sep 18, 2012 11:29 pm ]
Post subject:	Re: More I can't find you Problems
MacDuffie wrote: Steve, I don't think he meant that he made them slaves for use with the USB adapter. I think these were old drives he may have dual-booted with, and that's why they had been set up as slaves. Correct me if I'm wrong. All but one of these drives came from older machines that had a (C:) drive, a (D:) drive and a CD-ROM Drive. The (D:) drives were all slaves and of course the (C:) drives were masters. If they were (C:) drives, I set the drive to Slave before putting it in the USB enclosure. If they were (D:) drives, I just left them set as slaves and put them in the USB enclosure. Since the two working USB enclosures are both working, I doubt if I will go back and reset the IDE drives to Master as I can get everything I want off them as is. The USB enclosure that contains a Sata drive was working right from the get go. It is a 1000gb drive which came with the enclosure and I will probably transfer the data off all the drives to the 1000gb drive, then format the IDE drives and my project will be done.

Author:	dvair [ Wed Sep 19, 2012 1:03 am ]
Post subject:	Re: More I can't find you Problems
IDE drives connected by a USB adapter should be set to Master, as they are the only drive on that connection. The old Master/Slave was used because the IDE ribbon cable had a place for two drives and one needed to be identified as the Master. With the USB connection there is only one drive on it so the IDE drive should always be set to Master.

Author:	chadslink [ Wed Sep 19, 2012 2:58 pm ]
Post subject:	Re: More I can't find you Problems
dvair wrote: IDE drives connected by a USB adapter should be set to Master, as they are the only drive on that connection. The old Master/Slave was used because the IDE ribbon cable had a place for two drives and one needed to be identified as the Master. With the USB connection there is only one drive on it so the IDE drive should always be set to Master. Is there any advantage to making it master vs making it slave when it is installed in a USB enclosure other than being the proper way to do it? Will I see more files by calling it Master? I hate to take that thing apart again because it has such tiny screws holding it all together. I dropped one on the vinyl floor in the kitchen on the last go around and it took me forever to find it.

Author:	dvair [ Wed Sep 19, 2012 9:25 pm ]
Post subject:	Re: More I can't find you Problems
As long as the drive is being seen correctly, you don't really have to worry about the Master/Slave jumper position. If you should get a drive that you hook to an adapter and there are issues with it been seen changing the jumper to Master might fix the issue.

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