usb 2.0 external enclosures???

Message

sage529 · #1 Post by **sage529** » Fri Oct 15, 2004 10:23 am

They should be plug and play, no?

I've gone into the computer management console and tried assigning drive letters manually... still no go...

Tried connecting to a hub, to the back of my port rep, and to the machine directly...

could it be the enclosures themselves? went dirt cheap and got ones that don't even have power swtiches

because i needed 2 and didn't want to spend $100...

anyone have experience trouble shooting this stuff?

My machine: t41p, w/ XP Pro... in case that helps.

dr.b · #2 Post by **dr.b** » Fri Oct 15, 2004 10:37 am

check the harddrive
master/slave-setting on 3,5" drives...

JHEM · #3 Post by **JHEM** » Fri Oct 15, 2004 10:41 am

Yes, external enclosures should be Plug and Play.

However, what do you have in the enclosure? If it's a 2.5" HD, you'll probably need to connect to both of the USB ports on your T41p in order to get sufficient power to run the HD. The enclosure should have a double ended USB cable in order to do just that.

Failing that, or if you have a 3.5" HD in the enclosure, you'll need a powered hub.

Regards,

James

DavidNZ · #4 Post by **DavidNZ** » Fri Oct 15, 2004 1:39 pm

Do you have the external enclosure plugged directly into your TP or throught a hub? I find that if I plug mine directly into the machine itself, usually no problems. Plugging it into a hub usually presents problems for me (not recognising it, etc.). I think it was the moderator of the forums at everythingusb.com who said that, these days, it is still best to get an enclosure that allows power from the mains and not just a USB port.

whatsinthename · #5 Post by **whatsinthename** » Fri Oct 15, 2004 4:12 pm

sometimes if you are building one with a new bare drive, they are not formatted. use a partitioning software like paragon or ranish or partitionmagic to do the job and u should be good to go.

SCURaja · #6 Post by **SCURaja** » Fri Oct 15, 2004 4:58 pm

well for me..i was in the same position..i bought a coolMax enclosure from fry's for 20 bux..i had similar problems..i tried alot of different things to get it working...but i didn't get anywhere..until i tried my friends enclosure.. and it worked flawlessly..same model...
i went back to fry's returned it..and bought another one..and sure enough it works... for these cheap O enclosures you sometimes might have to return it..and get another one..

johniii · #7 Post by **johniii** » Fri Oct 15, 2004 5:31 pm

If you are using a drive previously installed in a thinkpad, make sure you remove the hard drive password if one was set. If not, when you try it with the USB adapter it will be recognized, but you can't do anything with it.

sage529 · #8 Post by **sage529** » Wed Oct 20, 2004 2:20 pm

just to clarify... they're both 3.5" drives that I had previously hooked up to my desktop via firewire enclosures and are formatted, partitioned, and whatnot. I've tried connecting them to both the hub and the machine directly... sometimes when i go into the "computer management" console, under storage I see that my tp recognizes the drives as there, but even if i assign letters to the drives, they don't show up under my computer... i figure it might just be the enclosures themselves... I guess I'll bite the bullet and ge t a firewire card and some new enclosures

dd · #9 Post by dd » Thu Oct 21, 2004 1:48 am

On a similar note:

Is it possible to run an O.S off a External connected via USB, with the original drive taken out of the thinkpad? Does the external drive need to be set as Slave?

w0qj · #10 Post by **w0qj** » Thu Oct 21, 2004 4:08 am

sorry to go off on a tangent...

which brand of 2.5" USB 2.0 HDD enclosure definitely can operate on power from just 1 (one) USB plug? (there are a few that sometimes need to use 2 USB plugs to get enough power ot operate)

kjarrett · #11 Post by **kjarrett** » Thu Oct 21, 2004 4:33 am

w0qj wrote:sorry to go off on a tangent...

which brand of 2.5" USB 2.0 HDD enclosure definitely can operate on power from just 1 (one) USB plug? (there are a few that sometimes need to use 2 USB plugs to get enough power ot operate)

Not a tangent - I am interested too - my T42p client needs one of these and the one he has grabs power from a mouse port ... guess what ... his T42p doesn't HAVE a mouse port!

Thanks, kj

DavidE · #12 Post by **DavidE** » Thu Oct 21, 2004 10:47 am

I've had good luck with this 3.5-inch USB 2.0 HDD enclosure from CompUSA (http://www.compusa.com/products/product ... pfp=SEARCH#). The internal fan is so quiet, I had to reopen the unit to make sure the fan was actually running. If you're looking for a 2.5-inch enclosure, you might check to see if CompUSA offers a similiar model in the smaller size.

The lowest-power external USB 2.0 drive I've run across is the EZ Bus Mini (http://apricorn.com/product_details.php?ID=414). Here's a short review of it that I wrote recently:

"The company goes by the colorful name of Apricorn, whatever that is. Fortunately, Apricorn's ultra-portable hard drive is much easier to define. According to the company, the EZ Bus Mini is the world's first and only bus powered USB 2.0/IF certified hard drive. I had a chance to try out the 40GB version, which measures a scant 2.75 x 3.93 x 0.59 inches. As small as it is, the case still has room for an integrated USB cable, so you won't have to carry anything extra. I couldn't resist, so I opened the case, where I discovered an Hitachi 9mm-tall 1.8-inch drive -- the same drive Archos uses in its AV480 Pocket Video Recorder.

The EZ Bus Mini draws so little power, you should be able to use it with almost any notebook computer with a built-in USB port. However, it won't work with USB 2.0 PC Card adapters unless you supply an additional power source. The bundled software includes Image EZ (which creates a single compressed backup file) and Clone EZ (which creates a bootable copy of your hard drive). Small enough to fit in your shirt pocket, and fast enough to shuffle gigabytes of data to and from your notebook, the EZ Bus Mini is a great supplement for a notebook with an undersized hard drive."

DavidE
(www.davidenglish.com)

jrigsby · #13 Post by **jrigsby** » Thu Oct 21, 2004 12:25 pm

I had a similar situation and determined that the drive had been configured as a dynamic disk, possible only with windows 2k professional and windows xp professional. After I fomatted the drive as a partitioned disk, the USB enclosure worked properly.

taphil · #14 Post by **taphil** » Thu Oct 21, 2004 3:24 pm

I use this 2.5" enclosure with a Toshiba hard disk

http://shop4.outpost.com/product/369822 ... IN_RSLT_PG

No problems with it. I actually have the firewire and USB2 version ($45 I think), and it's self-powered via USB with just the USB cable on my T41.

Oh, and it's made by the same company as the one from CompUSA mentioned above. I also have the 3.5" USB2 and firewire version that I got from CompUSA. It stopped working after a couple of weeks, but I exchanged it for another one which has been fine.

usb 2.0 external enclosures???

usb 2.0 external enclosures???

formatting

Who is online