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External enclosure woes

H

hwz8b

Member
Has anyone had experience using an external enclosure with a notebook? I currently own a Compaq Evo N150, and I have tried both a firewire cardbus/external enclosure combo and a USB 2.0 cardbus/external enclosure combo. I receive the same result. Under both Windows Me and Windows XP, both the USB 2.0 and firewire setups cannot recognize an 80GB harddrive and will only use a 40x CDRW drive as a CD-ROM (will not burn anything). However, the USB 2.0 enclosure is fully functional using the notebook's built-in USB 1.1 port.

Has anyone had the same problem? And how was it resolved?

Thanks in advance.
 
I think it might be a driver problem. Did you go to the various web sites and DL the latest drivers and install them in the right sequence (I believe that FW and USB generally require the drivers be loaded prior to connecting the device. Also be sure there isn't an update for your notebook's PCCard bay support drivers.
It may also be a jumper setting problem. Make sure that your drives are jumpered the way the enclosure requires (often slave).
.bh.
😕
 
The thing is that firewire and USB 2.0 drivers were supposed to have come with Windows XP. I also installed the USB 2.0 driver on the driver CD on WinMe. They did not help. What I now suspect is that both Windows Me and XP have overloaded the IRQ which the PCMCIA bridge uses. For God's sake, my computer is actually running the ethernet card, the modem, the graphic card, the soundcard, and the PCMCIA bridge, and the USB host adapter on the same IRQ. I suspect there is some kind of a hardware timing issue which is preventing the drive from being recognized correctly in Windows due to the IRQ (IRQ 10 being overloaded).
 
Yeah, XP sets up as ACPI for its default and loads up an IRQ like that. There is a way to turn off ACPI so that you can go back to assigning your own IRQs. Try this site as a starting point to look for the instructions: Windows Support Center .
.bh.
🙂
 
I did try resetting the computer setting in the hardware profile from an ACPI Computer System to a Standard PC option. After doing that, the system restarted and re-detected all the peripheral drivers. It did manage to re-balance the IRQs so that more IRQs are now used. I did find a noticeable decrease in system latency and sound blips afterwards. Nonetheless, it still hasn't resolved my original issue of getting the external enclosures to work 🙁 I guess I will just have to live with using my 40x burner at 4x and 7200 RPM 80GB harddrive at at ~ 800KB/sec speed. 🙁🙁🙁
 
hwz8b,

Can you tell me where you bought your firewire cardbus/external enclosure combo? I've just bought a new Toshiba Satellite A665-S6050 laptop, only to find it doesn't accept my 1394 Firewire cable. So now I need a card/enclosure that will accept a Firewire 400 (4 pin) cable AND will connect to my laptop via USB or eSATA/USB ports (it has both). Please let me know the make & model of the combos you tried plus where you bought them and how much I should expect to pay. All I'm trying to do is connect my Firewire 400 (4 pin) compatible camcorder to my very uncooperative laptop. Any ideas are welcome.

Thank you so much for your time, I really appreciate the help.
 
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