johnnymk

I have a Toshiba laptop with a PCMCIA USB 2.0 adapter (powered). I attached a USB 2.0 to IDE adapter to a 80 GB hard drive.

XP recognizes the USB hardware and notes a Mass Storage device, but "My Computer" shows nothing. I have rebooted with the hardware attached, used "Install New Hardware" and am getting nowhere. I have also tried various jumper settings on the hard drive.


Clues?

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mechmike0034

I dunno, but if it is any consolation, I've bought two cheap USB2 to IDE adapters in the last six months, and neither of them work, no matter what I do. They're too cheap to deal with RMA/return hassle...

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MikeD

Did you always have the IDE drive set to master?

I bought one a while back and it worked great. Took me a while to figure out the master part...but other than, worked like a charm (until the power adapter fried).

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mechmike0034

Yep, tried all kinds of different combinations using different computers and drives with no luck.

zero2dash

Have you went into Disk Management?
(easiest way to get there is right click on My Computer, choose Manage, and then go into Disk Management)

You might have to do something in there with it in order to get Windows to recognize it...I've had to do that before with external drives.

faither

Change the USB driver. I recently had a similar problem and contacted the manufacturer who stated that a recent Windows Update overwrites the generic USB mass storage device with a more specific one that turned out to be the problem for me. You should be able to roll back or replace it through Device Manager.

johnnymk

Per mechmike. I decided to try a USB case , and now it shows up after initializing it.

Well, there is an option for partitioning it . I waited 15 minutes and it showed only 3%, so I disconnected it. It's another HD, 40 GB not 80 GB.

I right clicked on the HD under my computer for quick formatting it. It seemed awful slow and then said that Windows is unable to format it (after 5 minutes).

What next?

gwilks98

I have this issue frequently here at work. If you have mapped network drives, that can cause it if you use drive letters immediately following the CD drive letters. So if I have a DVD drive and a CD burner, drives D and E on my laptop, and I have F mapped to a network share, my USB devices will not appear until I disconnect F.

The best thing to do is manually assign it an unused drive letter in diskmanagement, or change the network mapping to a lower letter. here was the workaround for me:

1. Right-click My Computer, and then click Manage.
2. Under Computer Management (Local), click Disk Management.
3. In the list of drives in the right pane, right-click the new drive and then click Change Drive Letter and Path(s).
4. Click Change, and in the drop-down box, select a drive letter for the new drive that is not assigned to a mapped network drive.
5. Click OK, and then click OK again.

source


I also submitted to our knowledgebase on how to disable USB mass storage devices on a PC, for security purposes. Check this out:
In Windows Explorer, navigate to the systemroot folder (usually named WINDOWS) and then to the Inf folder.
In the Inf folder, right click the file named Usbstor.pnf and select Properties.
Click the Security tab.
Find the name of the user you want to prevent from using USB storage devices in the list labeled Group Or User Names.
In the Permissions list, check the Deny checkbox next to Full Control.
Click OK.
Repeat the above steps for the file named Usbstor.inf.
Now the user(s) you selected will not be able to install USB storage devices to the computer. If one is already installed, you'll need to edit the registry to prevent USB devices from working. In your registry editor, navigate to:
HKEY LOCAL MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\UsbStor

In the right pane, double click the item labeled Start and in the Value Data field, enter 4 (make sure Hexadecimal is selected as the data type). Click OK and close the registry editor.

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johnnymk

I reconnected it. And the hard drive is clicking two times, then two times, then three times and then it sounds like a clock unwinding, This repeats itself about every three seconds. This is the same noise it made when it was trying to format the drive. It sounds like it is trying to reset itself???

If I disconnect the USB cable, the HD sounds smooth.