just got a caddy.. hd spins but no drive showing in windows?

Soldato
Joined
15 Nov 2002
Posts
3,983
Location
bed or the pub
Just got a fairly cheap Sumvision 3.5" hd caddy, and put a spare Hitachi 120gxp 120gb hd in it. Its left over from the days ibm/hitachi got famous for dead drives

now the drive spins and vista seems to recognise a usb disk.. but it won't appear in my computer. i've tried 16head master, and 15/16h CSEL on the jumpers.. no worky.. i've got another drive to try but am i missing something obvious?
 
Soldato
OP
Joined
15 Nov 2002
Posts
3,983
Location
bed or the pub
showing in device manager> disk drives as a generic usb device. i must be missing something simple, same prob with a maxtor diamondmax 10, theyre both new drives.. prob need to fdisk it.. but i've no idea how to on a usb device, or do it in vista...
 
Man of Honour
Joined
11 Mar 2003
Posts
10,706
Location
Greenock, Scotland
Right click on "Computer" and pick Manage. There should be an entry for Disk Management in the resultant window, go in there and the drive should be showing as unallocated space, right click on it and then create and format a partition on it and it should be given a drive letter etc and be available for use.
 
Soldato
OP
Joined
15 Nov 2002
Posts
3,983
Location
bed or the pub
wouldn't do that.. it wasn't there... but there was me, tryung to use an unpartitioned, unformatted clean drive. silly. very n00b mistake. Not one i would have made in the past.. lol @me.. stuck it in another rig as a plain IDE, partitioned and formatted using win2k setup disc, all sweet now. lol

muchas gracias anyway lol

EDIT: few notes on this caddy. It was cheap. £8 for a powered USB2 3.5" caddy. funnily enough the 2.5" ones were cheaper, but this one fitted drives i have. Now i can remember when even top brand parts didnt come with screws to fit HDs in - you only got HD screws with cases, and sometimes with the HD itself (some had none) - this caddy comes with its own screwdriver. Nice touch that, although i didnt really need it. The manual is typical taiwanese carp - a 6" square piece of waxed paper with a few heiroglyphs and some poorly arranged taiwanglish - but it ain't rocket science. The power brick (not a wall wart thank god) seems to be pretty well made, and once i'd set the drive up correctly, sticking it all together and connecting was a doddle.

I'm sure most of us have spare drives laying around - the 120gb HITACHI GXP IDE drive i've got in this was merely the largest of the four spares i have (120, 80, 30, 3.2) - it came to me for free about 2yr ago and i've never been bothered to use it, but with the get of 13mbps bb connection, i need all the space i can get. It's also useful to take with my laptop, as that doubles my usable space when going to fellow geek mates houses to share stuff.. lol

Think about it. A tenner, plus whatever old drive you have lying around.. instant big portable storage, and if it gets nicked or broken, it don't matter as much as, say, a grand's worth of pc

Could do with some anti-shock mounts though.. gunna look at putting lil rubber grommets on to suspend the HD slightly. Should cut down on the (very, very tiny) noise too :D
 
Last edited:
Soldato
OP
Joined
15 Nov 2002
Posts
3,983
Location
bed or the pub
LOL well that was good. it lasted all of about 3 minutes then the hd stopped spinning. I think its the caddy as the hd still works in other machines.

Completed a online RMA "any replacement items will be shipped asap. You do not need to return the faulty goods to us"

Not a bad returns policy, open to abuse though :eek:

2 C2D's ??? :D
 
Last edited:
Soldato
OP
Joined
15 Nov 2002
Posts
3,983
Location
bed or the pub
so my new caddy arrived today. no probs. fired right up. So i was messing about with the other one, with my 80gb diamondmax... and it works!! :D

BOGOF lol :D
 
Last edited:
Associate
Joined
25 Jan 2006
Posts
16
i had the same problem just a moment ago, to fix download windows vista updates or scout around for autopatcher to put vista up to service pack 1/2 what ever is the lasted, solved my problem (wd elements spun up worked on lappy, not on new vista, presumed solution within update)
 
Back
Top Bottom