Anything I've Missed?

[tomdavies]

Customer had the HDD from their old laptop put into a USB-IDE enclosure by another company so that they could keep the data from their old machine and copy it onto a new laptop that they had purchased.

Customer called me to say that the enclosure was not showing up in My Computer when attached, sure enough it wasn't. Thinking it was a simple driver issue, I attempted to install the manufacturers drivers from the CD provided. Unfortunately the manufacturer relied on MS Generic drivers for everything after Windows 95, and Win 95 drivers won't install on Vista or 7 because of a change to how the INF files are written (I think).

So, drivers became a problem and I took the laptop and enclosure away with me for further investigation. When I got back, plugged the enclosure back into the clients new laptop and voila - the drive appeared, I could read and write to it and everything was fine. 5 minutes later I try to copy a file over and the drive has vanished again. "USB Device Not Recognised".

Checked device manager and it is no longer listed as it was before (when it was functioning fine) - not even as an unknown device...

Tested the enclosure with another 2.5" HDD just to check it wasn't the HDD and it behaves the same way - VERY occasionally connecting but otherwise not recognised.

Have taken the HDD out of the enclosure now and placed in an old/testing laptop I have lying around to copy all of the clients data over to their new machine and will suggest to them sending the enclosure back for a refund and I will transfer their HDD to a new enclosure for them (as client noted they would like to use it as an external HDD for backups etc.).

Just wondering if you all agree that most likely the enclosure is faulty and it's not a driver issue or something similar?

Tried the enclosure on two XP machines (1 laptop, 1 desktop), a Vista machine and a Windows 7 machine -- on all the enclosure behaves the same.

 

[MrUnknown]

Sounds like the enclosure if it is working perfectly fine in the old laptop you put it in.

As for Win95 drivers under Vista and 7, there have been huge changes in how the Windows OS operates since 1995. No amount of INF editing will get a 95 driver to work under Vista.

 

[Skyhooker]

Either a bad enclosure or a bad cable.

 

[Cambridge PC Support]

I agree, enclosure or cable

do you have a spare cable to try with it?

 

[xxsilk109xx]

Is it showing up when you view it through the computer management "program" ?

It may have a drive letter conflict if its not the usb cable or enclosure. I would try to take it out of the enclosure and hook it up to a usb to sata or ide converter and see if it appears then..

 

[tankman1989]

I had a similar problem with a 2.5" adapter. The adapter that I was using had 2 USB plugs, one was for power and the other was for data transfer. It acted intermittently as well. I never got it to work correctly and found that it was the adapter and not the drive. Don't know if this helps, but it may be a similar situation. BTW, the adapter was an aluminum case just large enough to fit the drive in.

 

[tomdavies]

Thanks for the replies everyone. Tried with a different cable, still the same results so I'm guessing that narrows it down the enclosure itself.

xxsilk109xx, nope... checked in Computer Management under Disk Management and nothing shows. I was hoping it just wasn't being allocated a drive letter for a while too

tankman1989 - sounds almost identical to the enclosure I have here. USB cable with 2 connectors, blue aluminium case that JUST fits the drive and a little green LED that comes on when powered? Could well be the same enclosure

Called the customer and explained to her what was going on yesterday and am off to buy a new enclosure for the drive today (would have been yesterday but the roads were terrible with all the recent snow!). Will post results of trying the drive in it's new enclosure when I test it.

 

[tomdavies]

Just to add a conclusion to this thread. Purchased a new enclosure and installed the HDD in it about 20 minutes ago, everything is working fine now. Most likely the cheap (- £10.00) enclosure that whoever did the previous work used just gave up.

 

[repairit]

I've run into that issue with a personal enclosure. The internal board stopped working but when I dropped it into my box, it ran great. They don't seem to be as sturdy as standard external drives and I generally try to avoid them and advise my clients to do the same. Glad that worked out for you.