Problem Using Internal HDD in External Enclosure

[samuraijake]

I have an 80 GB Seagate EIDE Internal hard drive. I purchased the Vantec NexStar (USB 2.0) external hard drive enclosure for this drive. I put it in the enclosure, connected it, formatted it, and everything was peachy. After the first time I disconnected it, it failed to work again. I'm running Windows XP Pro SP1. When I connect the drive via USB, device manager identifies it as an "Unknown Device." I took it out of the enclosure and connected it internally to test the drive itself and everything checked out. Is there some step I'm missing here? How can I get this thing working? Thanks for any advice.

 

[Zucarita9000]

I have the same enclosure and it's working just fine. You should disable Windows write cache with USB drive, this way you can unplug them whenever you want (slight performance hit, thou...).

Try to plug the enclosure in a different USB port.

 

[LTC8K6]

Make sure the drive is set as master.

Either disable the write caching on the drive or remember to click on the Safely Remove Hardware icon before you disconnect it.

 

[samuraijake]

Switching USB ports doesn't change anything. The drive's jumpers are set to master. Where do I go to disable write caching?

 

[corkyg]

In addition to all the other stuff - make sure that the external case is separately powered.

As for the drive - there is no difference in the drive that is internal or external. Same drives.

To disable Write Caching, go to My COmputer, right click on the external drive - then click PROPERTIES, then select the POLICIES tab and select the upper one - quick disconnect/connect as opposed to performance. That disables the write cache and eliminates all those "DELAYED WRITE FAILURE" messages.

But - that is not always possible. I have an external SATA drive and that choice is GRAYED OUT! I suppose that will require a Registry hack.

 

[Zucarita9000]

Originally posted by: corkyg
But - that is not always possible. I have an external SATA drive and that choice is GRAYED OUT! I suppose that will require a Registry hack.

I believe that you need a motherboard capable of SATA HOT PLUG for that to work. I know mine does not support it.