Archived from groups: comp.sys.hp.hardware,comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage (
More info?)
This is beginning to sound potentially serious: I bought the connectors very
cheaply on E-Bay and they came without the pin blanked out so I presumed
that one connected them by marrying up the non-connected socket to the
non-existent pin. That didnt work in any configuration whatsoever. Then
someone on another group suggested that the drive might be plugged in the
wrong way so I turned it round and it made no difference.
I suppose I will have to enquire with IBM if it is possible to do fry a
drive by connecting it the wrong way, - asking diplomatically whether
connecting one of their drives the wrong way around will actually toast THIS
drive which wasnt working before I connected it either way
Do you have any particular knowledge of the pin configuration on an ATA/IDE
drive such that you actually know that (for example) a socket which is
sensitive will burn out the drive when connected the wrong way around to a
pin which is powereed or are you assuming that the drive might be toasted
just becasue the drive obviously wasnt designed to be connected that way?
Manufacturing a connector without a blanked out plug so that this can be
done does tend to suggest that no ill effects can be assumed from conecting
it the wrong way, - although obviously it wont work.
Otherwise it is a case for negative feedback to deter anyone else from
dealing with a manufacturer who lets their articles toast drives.
I bought it as a firewire drive and plugged it into a Mac and it worked
immediately. When I tried to plug it into a PC it was never seen at all as
anything (the PC card was but the drive on the other side of it wasn't: Even
when powered which it neednt be on a Mac).
So ulimately when I accidentally broke the firewire casing and circuit board
of the drive trying to get it to work, I took out the 2.5 drive and have
been trying to use it as such ever since. I was going to use it to clone my
12 gig drive on my main computer which his running out of space BADLY to the
30 gig drive. But actually I have never seen any evidence that this 30 gig
drive was ever working in the last six or nine months since I did the
initial test on the Mac, when the blue light went on on the drive and it
worked perfectly. (When I finally discovered about the PC card needing
powering and then managed to get the blue light to go on on the drive
connected to a PC, it didnt make any difference to whether the drive was
recognised at all. I was then told that firewire is exceptionally
problematical on PCs and isnt just a given, even on XP)
"Christian Dürrhauer" <cduerr@geog.fu-berlin.de> wrote in message
news
1jq65m0tt9b.dlg@73137.user.dfncis.de...
> On the seventh day, Licensed to Quill wrote...
>
> > is there anything in th eBIOS of a Pavilion 4535 which woiudl prevent an
IBM
> > Travelstar being seen on boot up?
>
> Not that I know of.
>
> > It is neither seen on POST, identified or seen in setup of the BIOS. And
> > when I put it in the computer (with a 2.5 to 3.5 adapter),
>
> this is a potential risk. Plugin such an adapter the wrong way and you've
> most certainly just toasted your harddisk. Are you sure you connected it
in
> the right way?
>
> > the whole
> > computer stops working and stops even seeing the disc drive so that I
can
> > boot from it an dlook at what drives are supposed to be there.
> >
> > The drive is a 30 gig ATA/IDE 4200RPM 5V 1 Amp drive. Is there some
limit
> > on size or other specification in the 4535 BIOS which would do this??
>
> I don't know of any, and then, of course, it's always possible. In case
> your current hard disk has a size of below 30gigs, you should get a larger
> one just for testing. What does your BIOS tell you about its age?
>
> > I have tried it alone, with other drives I know to be working, jumpered
as
> > Drive 0 or drive 1 or cable select and both ways around in how the
> > Travelstar is connected to the adapter so that isnt the problem
>
> IMO you are currently either facing the death of the drive you might have
> just toasted or you are experiencing the 32gigs BIOS bug. Only way to be
> sure is to test a drive larger than 30gigs on your Pavillon, then you know
> the issue.
>
> HTH
>
> --
> mit freundlichen Grüßen/with kind regards
> Christian Dürrhauer, Institute of Geography, FU Berlin
>
> A child of five could understand this! Fetch me a child of five.
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