computer does not recognize external hard drive

Hi sammorris, how are you today? Will the S-ATA fit in this external case that I purchased for the failed Maxtor? How do I tell if I have the S-ATA connections on my motherboard? I just never seem to run out of questions, do I?

 

Hi, I'm not bad thanks. Don't worry about asking questions, that's why AD is here.
If you're plugging in a device into an external case that's different, you need one that'll accept SATA drives. Generally external enclosures only support IDE drives, but not always. USB2 is the cheap way of connecting them, Firewire is better, External SATA (sata drives with this one obviously) is the best, but few motherboards support it.

 

Sammorris, so shall I assume my motherboard does not support S-ATA and go with IDE or try to find out, if so how? Will the driver disk for the external case tell me if it supports SATA?

 

You're confusing me a bit here about internal and external drives. Which do you want, an external or an internal?
Most motherboards support S-ATA for internal drives, but very few support S-ATA for External drives. You can get enclosures that fit SATA drives in them, but they run off USB2 or firewire. External SATA or eSATA is a rare feature.

 

Sorry to confuse the issue. Will try a recap from the beginning. 1. Had a HD failure on a computer running ME. 2. Someone told me I could gain access to this HD by removing it and putting it in an external case. 3. I bought a case, removed the HD from the computer and put it in the external case. 4. Hooked up the HD (in it's external case, thru USB) to another computer running XP. Still not able to access it, and through various inputs from OGS and yourself, came to the conclusion that the HD was history. 5. Started shopping for a new internal drive to put in the case and use it as a back up drive for the computer running XP. 6. When I started shopping for the new HD I found all these different things (IDE,SATA, SCA, and ACSI) and did not know what I needed to buy. 6. This brings us up to yesterday when I posted the question starting with "it's me again". 7. Having been convinced I need a back up drive, I am looking to buy an internal HD so I can use the external case I just bought. Is this not the thing to do? If it isn't I will buy the external HD and write off the $40 I paid for this case. Hope you are having a great weekend, and thx again for all of your help.

 

Right OK. Sorry, you didn't make it very clear before. There's little point wasting that enclosure. If it only does USB, then for one thing you're not going to see the speed advantage of SATA and secondly, a USB only enclosure probably won't support SATA anyway.
What you want to buy is an IDE disk drive. The rest is up to you, stick to the IDE (UDMA / PATA) section.

 

Hi There! In reading the outside of the external enclosure box, I see; USB 2.0 3.5" Support ATAP10 modes0-4, ultra DMA 0-4. IEEE1394 3.5" Enhanced IDE/ATAPI protocol, Support ATAPIO moes0-4, Ultra DMA modes 0-5. Serial ATA 3.5" Support 1 40pin IDE Interface. Does any of this mean it supports SATA? If so, how do I find out if my computer supports SATA? Does any of this tell you what you needed to know? The name of the enclosure is Metal Gear Box and it is from EBay. If you get time let me know what you think of all this.

 

I think what that case is trying to tell you is that you can use an SATA drive with an IDE-SATA adapter. Don't, you're wasting speed and money.

Go for an IDE drive, since that's the plug thats inside the box unit. Your PC need not support SATA to use an external drive anyway, the only format it needs to know is the format the data's coming FROM that external disk, in this case USB2.

 

Thank You! For clearing all that up for me. Boy, things get complicated when you are not sure what you are doing. Am off to look for an IDE HD, so far I really like the Maxtor 300gb. Will let you know how it turns out. Thx again

 

Go for it, and glad I could help.

 

I am a newbie here. I have the same problem as stated above. I formatted my computer and now, if I connetc my external HD, the windows can not assign a driver letter on it.

I tried using the disk management thing. I can see my external HD in there but what should I do next. Formatiing the external HD is defnitely out of the question. I moved all my important files to my external HD before formatting my computer.

I hope you can help me with this. Thank you so much for evrythign beforehand.

 

Does the disk work on any other computers?

 

It cannot be recognised by any other computers. Anyway I have recovered all my files using a software called "Getdata back for NTFS". Although a lot of my office documents are ruined. Thank you for your attention. I paid only like 4 dollars to recover the data for 6 hours of work. Cheap labour cost here

 

sammorris - Happy Easter. Just a word to let you know, my new Maxtor 300G HDD came in and have installed it. Even managed to get those thousands of pics I wanted saved on it. Don't know what I did right, but it is working. A GREAT BIG THANK YOU for all of your help. I could never have done it with all the great help I get on this forum. Thanks AGain

 

You're most welcome, and a belated happy easter to you too.

 

I have the same problem and really appreciate some help. I have brought a new hard drive for my notebook as the old one starts to have noise. I put the new hard drive in, installed Windows XP, put the old drive into an external case and plug into the USB port, but Windows could not recognize the old drive. It shows up in the device manager, but it does not show up in the explorer nor the disk management even after I plug in the power cord. However, the old drive works smoothly (except the noise) when I put it back to my notebook, but the Windows in the old drive would not recognize the new drive if I put the new drive into the external case and plug it in. I tried to plug the external case into my desktop, it only recognize the new drive but not the old drive. Now I am stuck because I could not get the info in the old drive to the new drive. Can anyone please give me some advice?

 

Cor, that took me a while to follow that!
So, if I understand correctly, it will only recognise the new drive in the enclosure, not the old one?

 

Yes, my desktop only recognise the new drive in the enclosure, and my laptop recognise neither of them in the enclosure, so there is no way I can get the stuff in the old drive to the new drive...

 

Hi all,

I am here to seek a solution.

I have an external hard disk Maxtor 6Y160P0 USB Device.

It was working fine until I one day when my computer auto shuts down pretty frequently. And now the hard disk cannot be accessed.

The disk drive is still there but I can't access it.

An error msg with the following quotes appear.

I:\ is not accesssible.
The request is not supported.

I am a Win XP user. Anyone have any helpful suggestion for me?

Thank you in advance, anyone.

 

What I'd try and do is turn off the PC, take the drive out of the enclosure, and put it in the PC as a regular hard disk. See if the hard drive is recognised there. If it is, then there's probably a fault with your external enclosure, they're cheap to replace. If it isn't, there may be an issue with the drive. We'll come to that if necessary!!