Hard Drive Enclosure Doesn't Recognize Some Drives

[Fuzzeoly]

I bought a 3.5" sata 1 & 2 hard drive enclosure and it won't recognize some of my hard drives. I thought it was broken at first but than I tried a laptop sata drive and it recognized it and worked fine. But two other sata drives which i actually want to use don't work in it. I hear the drives spin up so they are getting power and both drives work fine directly hooked up to the motherboard. I don't know what's wrong.

[Plastic Nev]

Hi, and welcome to FPCH.

OK I have to ask the obvious, are all the drives it won't recognise SATA? If IDE then that is why.

Can you let us know, the make and model of enclosure, also all details of the drives it will and will not recognise, we may spot something in that.

Nev.

[Fuzzeoly]

First i'd like to say thanks for replying and being so friendly and helpful. Most Forums I post on it seems that everyone has a grudge against you for no reason. Anyways...

 

Yes all the drives i'm trying are SATA, I have so far only tried 3 drives which i have available to me. One is a seagate momentus 5400.3 a laptop hard drive, the one that works. The other 2 are Maxtor Diamondmax Plus 9 120GB hard drives, the ones that don't work.

 

Now the make of the enclosure, and probably my first mistake, It was a cheap chinese made one off ebay. I've contacted the seller in hopes of more information on the make.

[Plastic Nev]

Right now and off the top of my head, the laptop drive that works is a two and a half inch drive I would think, whereas the two maxtor drives are three and a half desktop drives, there may be incompatibilities because the enclosure you have is only for the two and a half inch laptop drives hence why not working.

 

I have found a docking station that does state it is compatible with both sizes. I am not advertising here, but it is available from Maplin at just short of £25, have a look here=

http://www.maplin.co.uk/sata-hard-drive-usb-docking-station-222999

If you can find out a bit more about the enclosure you have it may help to decide if it is compatible with the larger drives.

Nev.

[Fuzzeoly]

Well i wanted it for a 3.5" Drive and it was stated that it was for a 3.5" and it says on the eclosure 3.5 and it's sized for it.

[Fuzzeoly]

I did some looking around and i believe it to be this one http://www.sznetwork.net/productn.asp?ArticleID=1160 I'll be asking them for some support, and if they tell me anything interesting i'll post it.

[Plastic Nev]

Thanks for the update and will be interested to know what they say. From the specifications, I read it to say that there is a 3.5 inch version or 2.5 version available as two separate things, though you were informed you were buying the 3.5 version, I suspect it is the 2.5 inch you have, though I wouldn't have thought a 3.5 inch drive would physically fit. However I could be wrong.

Nev.

[Fuzzeoly]

I've recently been able to try a 500 GB seagate barricuda 3.5" and low and behold...it works perfectly. So the problem i'm left with is why won't my Maxtor DiamondMax 9's work, and is it fixable. I'll ask this to Seagate and the manufacturer of my enclosre also.

One difference I notice is that these Maxtor's have jumpers unlike the newer SATA drives i own. Does anybody know if there's a certain jumper setting I need to set on them to get them to be recognized in the enclosure.

 

Pic

http://img714.imageshack.us/img714/1268/p1010044lq.jpg