1.8" External Hdd

[Captain Pooka]

I bought a 60gb 1.8" off of ebay and an external case for it. i put it all together (I think right)....

This is what it looks like

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41A2DmtzFfL._SL500_AA280_.jpg

This is the case

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT&item=350201273225

You can see the cable thing that goes from the circuit board to the hard drive. I pressed the cable into the hard drive.. it only went like half way in. I connected the external hdd to my computer and the green light comes on and my computer does "Detect New Hardware". It installs correctly and it's ready to use, so I'm assuming everything is connected correctly.

The hdd wont pop up as a storage device in My Computer though and I don't know what's up. I figured since it installed correctly and everything it would pop up with a drive letter.

Any ideas?

Thanks

-Q

The same problem persists on two different computers.

-------

My Computer (right click) > Manage > Disk Management.

I'm on my girlfriends computer. She has the c: drive and a d: partition on that same drive. Then she has a bunch of "Removable Disk" drives (F,G,H, and I) There's nothing there so I don't know why they're there.. anyway, that's not my problem. Under Disk Management there is a Disk Five

That's the 1.8". The removable drives sday "Removable" then " No Media" under them - Disk Five says "Unknown" "Not Initialized" under it. I right click it and try to initialize it and it says "The Device is Not Ready".

The drive under the properties is recognized as an 811 ATA/ATAPI device USB device

DEvice Type: Disk drives
Manufactureer: (Standard disk drives)
Location: on USB mass Storage Device
Device Status ---- This Device is working properly

Here's my problem. Under Volumes

Disk: Disk 5
Type: Unknown
Satus: Not Initialized
Partition Style: Not Applicable
Capacity: 0
Unallocated space: 0
Reserved space: 0

And there's nothing under the Volumes at the botom.

Now I'm worried i don't have it connected right and I'm pretty sure I did it like I'm suposed to. The thing, again, didn't go all the way in - but as far as it would...

 

[Atomic Rooster]

Have you tried rebooting the computer with the drive attached? Sometimes that will allow the OS to properly recognize the drive and allow you to initialize and format it.

Are you sure the drive is good? It could have come DOA from the person you purchased it from.

 

[Captain Pooka]

I'll try rebooting the computer. The person I got the drive from said it worked - but how far can that be trusted?

Thanks for the reply.

-Q

 

[setishock]

The connection is a ZIF style connector. Zero Insertion Force. It will press on to a point and stop. If it's being reconized then most likely it's not formatted. Grab the formatting software from toshiba and make a boot disk.
Disk: Disk 5
Type: Unknown
Satus: Not Initialized
Partition Style: Not Applicable
Capacity: 0
Unallocated space: 0
Reserved space: 0

 

[Captain Pooka]

http://www.softpedia.com/progDownload/HDD-Low-Level-Format-Tool-Download-37794.html

How do you want me to make a boot disk of it to reformat an external harddrive?

When I try to run the program it says, "Error accessing device: The device is not ready" ... I'm running in circles here

Thanks for the replies!

-Q

Restarting the computer didn't work. I've found lots of threads about this and it seems there are no solutions...

 

[Grantofhell]

Possibly a USB 2.0 device on 1.1 ports? If the drive isn't powered, it won't "initialize". It reads it's compatible with 1.1 but I doubt it.

 

[Captain Pooka]

I don't think I can find a computer with 1.1 lol... that was a long time ago... Thanks for the thought though!

 

[essentialx3]

try using a different port on a different hub

 

[Captain Pooka]

Lol, thanks for your reply, but different ports do not work either.

It is indeed something with the drive... or it's something with the cable. I researched this stuff for hours and some how I stumbled apon a picture of cables... There's no literature about them - just that one picture that I saw. One is a blue - blue tip cable and one is a white - blue tip cable. I'm sure they're for different hard drives and I know that Toshiba is only one of the two (that I heard of) manufactures, most common at least, of these drives. I contacted the chinese guy I bought the drive from and he said he would track down one of those cables for me and send it to me for $1.50... free shipping from Hong Kong too... easy as that. This was a few days ago and the item has already been shipped. I'll keep this post up to date.

Thanks for all of your replies.

-Q

 

[hpatelr]

did you resolve this issue? i am having same problem. can you please advice?