Unique but Urgent Problem with Disk Enclosures

[janshim]

Twelve years of IT experience (and years spent tweaking XP PRO) had not prepared me to deal with this problem. I recently bought a SAROTECH HARDBOX 3.5" Enclosure (http://www.sarotech.com/cgi/main_eng.cgi?cmd=fhd_354_e) and a Western Digital Caviar SE 200GB disk. This is connected to my Dell Inspiron 8500 laptop via USB 2.0 port, and the OS is XP PRO. Installation was smooth-powered up the enclosure and XP PRO immediately recognised the hard disk and proceeded to let me Initialize and Format the disk for use. Once the formatting was completed, I proceeded to copy and paste a 30GB folder from my C: drive to the new F: drive .. it was here when suddenly there's a warning message that Windows XP was unable to copy the data because "the device is not ready" or something to that effect. Then the device completely disappeared from XP. I return this WD 200GB disk to the shop, they plugged it to their test PC and it refused to boot so they gave me a brand new loaner, a 160GB Maxtor. The technician at the store fitted the disk to my enclosure then formatted the disk for me and I thought I was home free. The second I tried to copy the same folder to this newly formatted disk, the same thing happened.

I powered it down and then on only to find the following message. I had the "Unknown Decide" removed then power up the device again hoping it would re-install it but same thing.

"One of the USB devices attached to this computer has malfunctioned, and Windows does not recognize it. For assistance in solving this problem, click here"

I have used 2.5" USB drives for years and have never faced a problem close to this magnitude. Has anyone here experienced this before? I have never even heard of enclosure corrupting a hard disk to the point of permanent (physical) damage.

 

[folken]

Have you tried making a large file transfer from another computer? There is always the possibility that it just hates your computer, that happens to me all the time
I assume it is probably showing up in device manager with a big yellow ! next to it. Try doing update driver in device manager.
Are there any drivers avaliable online for that thing? I know xp shouldn't need drivers for any sort of usb storage but if there are some avaliable I'd give them a try. My neighbors usb devices start saying they have malfunctioned every once in a while. Reinstalling the drivers fixes it every time.

<A HREF="http://www.folken.net/myrig.htm" target="_new">My precious...</A>

 

[Crashman]

It could be a heat problem, first thing I'd suggest is to use a 5400RPM drive to reduce heat. Performance is the same, because the interface is the limitting factor with USB 2.0 and Firewire.

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[janshim]

The problem occurs almost as soon as i switched it on so I would rule out heat as a possible cause. Since my last post, I have managed to get it reformatted and now appears to be running fine. Because my XP would not recognise it at all, I had it formatted in FAT32 on my old Win98 SE PC and then moved it over to my laptop which appears to be Ok so far that has lasted over 8 hours now. I left it running overnight and neither the Sarotech Enclosure nor the Maxtor disk has shown any problems. Question for you. Would it make any difference if I had it formatted to NTFS? My oldest OS in the house is Win98SE and i'm told SE is able to read NTFS volumes. The other PC has a Win2K OS so I'm seeing no OS-related compatibility issues here.

 

[Crashman]

Fat32 has a 4GB file size limit. It's possible when moving a folder for it to begin copying files, then suddenly quit when one of the files exceeds the 4GB file size limit.

<font color=blue>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to a hero as big as Crashman!</font color=blue>
<font color=red>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to an ego as large as Crashman's!</font color=red>

 

[_WW_]

When I tried to move a file over 4Gb to a FAT32 volume I got a message telling me the device didn't have enough free space. I've got two 5.25 enclosures and one thing I found out about them is that the power cord had to be pushed completely in until it seemed to snap in place. The enclosures gave me fits working intermittently and I nearly RMA'd them until I figured it out.

There is a program out there for download called "DiskInternals NTFS Reader" Here's the publishers description:

Provides read access to NTFS disks from Windows 95, 98 and Me. Allows you to save any files to any disk visible on the system or on the network. Supports saving compressed or encrypted files. While saving, it ignores file security policies. It means that it is possible to access absolutely any file on a NTFS disk from Windows 9x. The program can create and open images of NTFS disks. NTFS Reader is FREE.. <A HREF="http://www.DiskInternals.com" target="_new">http://www.DiskInternals.com</A>




....WW (5.0)

 

[Codesmith]

Is your PC running SP2 and theirs SP1a?

My enclosure would often lockup after very large transfers (its 5.25" and I even left the top off once so I know it wasn't from heat).

After upgrading to SP2 it working completely.

Just a thought.