Help with hard drives in USB enclosures with Vista

I have four hard drives (3 old, one new); the three old ones, all
formatted NTFS, had worked OK in my previous XP system. The XP box went
down in flames and, as time was critical, I had to replace it with an
off-the-shelf VISTA machine. I can get only one of these drives to be
recognized in either of two USB enclosures (one is an old house brand
CompUSA box, the other is a new AcomData box). I have tried with
backside USB ports, frontside ports and two different USB expansion
devices and VISTA will only recognize one of the old ones and doesn't
see the new one, which hasn't been formatted yet. One of the oldies is
an 80 gig Seagate; the others are all Maxtor of 200, 250 and 500 gig. If
anyone has any suggestions, please, oh please, pass them on. I will be
eternally grateful.
Allen

"Allen" <allent@austin.rr.com> wrote in message
news:v4mdndALw6Wc2xrVnZ2dnUVZ_uWdnZ2d@giganews.com ...
>I have four hard drives (3 old, one new); the three old ones, all
>formatted NTFS, had worked OK in my previous XP system. The XP box went
>down in flames and, as time was critical, I had to replace it with an
>off-the-shelf VISTA machine. I can get only one of these drives to be
>recognized in either of two USB enclosures (one is an old house brand
>CompUSA box, the other is a new AcomData box). I have tried with backside
>USB ports, frontside ports and two different USB expansion devices and
>VISTA will only recognize one of the old ones and doesn't see the new one,
>which hasn't been formatted yet. One of the oldies is an 80 gig Seagate;
>the others are all Maxtor of 200, 250 and 500 gig. If anyone has any
>suggestions, please, oh please, pass them on. I will be eternally grateful.


Most external USB boxes require the drive to be jumpered as a Slave.
However, I got caught out recently with one that only worked if the drive
was jumpered as Master. No idea why, but it worked fine after changing to
Master and that was on a Vista PC.
--
Keith W
Sunbury on Thames
(If you can't laugh at life, it ain't worth living)

Keith W wrote:
> "Allen" <allent@austin.rr.com> wrote in message
> news:v4mdndALw6Wc2xrVnZ2dnUVZ_uWdnZ2d@giganews.com ...
>> I have four hard drives (3 old, one new); the three old ones, all
>> formatted NTFS, had worked OK in my previous XP system. The XP box went
>> down in flames and, as time was critical, I had to replace it with an
>> off-the-shelf VISTA machine. I can get only one of these drives to be
>> recognized in either of two USB enclosures (one is an old house brand
>> CompUSA box, the other is a new AcomData box). I have tried with backside
>> USB ports, frontside ports and two different USB expansion devices and
>> VISTA will only recognize one of the old ones and doesn't see the new one,
>> which hasn't been formatted yet. One of the oldies is an 80 gig Seagate;
>> the others are all Maxtor of 200, 250 and 500 gig. If anyone has any
>> suggestions, please, oh please, pass them on. I will be eternally grateful.
>
>
> Most external USB boxes require the drive to be jumpered as a Slave.
> However, I got caught out recently with one that only worked if the drive
> was jumpered as Master. No idea why, but it worked fine after changing to
> Master and that was on a Vista PC.
Thanks, Keith. I'll try that.
Allen

Allen wrote:
>
> I have four hard drives (3 old, one new); the three old ones, all
> formatted NTFS, had worked OK in my previous XP system. The XP box
> went down in flames and, as time was critical, I had to replace it
> with an off-the-shelf VISTA machine. I can get only one of these
> drives to be recognized in either of two USB enclosures (one is an
> old house brand CompUSA box, the other is a new AcomData box). I
> have tried with backside USB ports, frontside ports and two
> different USB expansion devices and VISTA will only recognize one
> of the old ones and doesn't see the new one, which hasn't been
> formatted yet. One of the oldies is an 80 gig Seagate; the others
> are all Maxtor of 200, 250 and 500 gig. If anyone has any
> suggestions, please, oh please, pass them on. I will be eternally
> grateful.

You are replacing the wrong thing. Dump Vista, install Linux.
Ubuntu is probably useful for this. See the following:

<http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_cost.txt>
<http://www.securityfocus.com/columnists/423>
<http://www.schneier.com/crypto-gram-0702.html#8>
<http://www.aaxnet.com/editor/edit043.html>

--
[mail]: Chuck F (cbfalconer at maineline dot net)
[page]: <http://cbfalconer.home.att.net>
Try the download section.

On Wed, 23 Jul 2008 16:34:22 +0100, "Keith W"
<invalidaddress@invalidaddress.invalid> wrote:

>
>"Allen" <allent@austin.rr.com> wrote in message
>news:v4mdndALw6Wc2xrVnZ2dnUVZ_uWdnZ2d@giganews.co m...
>>I have four hard drives (3 old, one new); the three old ones, all
>>formatted NTFS, had worked OK in my previous XP system. The XP box went
>>down in flames and, as time was critical, I had to replace it with an
>>off-the-shelf VISTA machine. I can get only one of these drives to be
>>recognized in either of two USB enclosures (one is an old house brand
>>CompUSA box, the other is a new AcomData box). I have tried with backside
>>USB ports, frontside ports and two different USB expansion devices and
>>VISTA will only recognize one of the old ones and doesn't see the new one,
>>which hasn't been formatted yet. One of the oldies is an 80 gig Seagate;
>>the others are all Maxtor of 200, 250 and 500 gig. If anyone has any
>>suggestions, please, oh please, pass them on. I will be eternally grateful.
>
>
>Most external USB boxes require the drive to be jumpered as a Slave.

I must have only had odd ones then, most if not all I've had
needed the drive jumpered as master.

If it is only the smallest drive that is working, I would
wonder if the controller can't support the higher capacity
drives and just as a temporary test, I'd put the (typically
a feature of semi-modern HDDs) 32GB capacity limiting jumper
on the drive just to see if it then works - which would then
tend to confirm it was too large a capacity.

However, the info that the old box "went down in flames" is
a bit vague, some kinds of problems like a power surge or
PSU failure could potentially have damaged a drive(s). The
surest bet is connecting them to another known compatible
(desktop) windows system over it's integral hard drive
controller instead of any of these external USB boxes, then
if there is any luck, copy off the data and/or run the HDD
manufacturer's diagnostics on them.

Keith W wrote:
> "Allen" <allent@austin.rr.com> wrote in message
> news:v4mdndALw6Wc2xrVnZ2dnUVZ_uWdnZ2d@giganews.com ...
>> I have four hard drives (3 old, one new); the three old ones, all
>> formatted NTFS, had worked OK in my previous XP system. The XP box went
>> down in flames and, as time was critical, I had to replace it with an
>> off-the-shelf VISTA machine. I can get only one of these drives to be
>> recognized in either of two USB enclosures (one is an old house brand
>> CompUSA box, the other is a new AcomData box). I have tried with backside
>> USB ports, frontside ports and two different USB expansion devices and
>> VISTA will only recognize one of the old ones and doesn't see the new one,
>> which hasn't been formatted yet. One of the oldies is an 80 gig Seagate;
>> the others are all Maxtor of 200, 250 and 500 gig. If anyone has any
>> suggestions, please, oh please, pass them on. I will be eternally grateful.
>
>
> Most external USB boxes require the drive to be jumpered as a Slave.
> However, I got caught out recently with one that only worked if the drive
> was jumpered as Master. No idea why, but it worked fine after changing to
> Master and that was on a Vista PC.
Follow-up: I had jumpered all the drives so I thought they were the same
as the working drive. Three are Maxtor, including the single working
drive. Silly me, I had assumed that all would have the same
configuration, but no; when I checked the labels I found that all three
had different jumper setups. I changed them all to master and all three
of those are working. Perhaps silly inconsistencies like that are part
of the reason for Maxtor's less than stellar reputation. Thanks again,
Keith for your helpful--and amazingly fast--response.
Allen