External enclosure for a 7200 hdd?

valve90210

valve90210

valve90210

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17 Jan 2006
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Hi All.

A while back I was given a 400gb seagate barracuda drive which had been working fine but had been swapped for a larger disk.

I tried it in a very cheap usb enclosure I had but my pc didn't recognise it when I switched it on...

At the time I didn't bother to look into an exciting further but now I'd like to try to get it working if possible to use it as a download drive hooked up my wdtv live.

Is it possible that the cheap enclosure wasn't suitable for a 7200 hdd? It seems to be working fine with an older 5400 drive ok?

If this is likely to be the case are there any ide to usb enclosures which would be suitable that don't cost much?

If I can be bothered I might dig out my old pc and hook the drive up to that to check the drive does still actually work...
 
If the enclosure is bus powered, it's limited to ~5W which might not be enough to spin up a 7200 drive, particularly an old one. (Is it SATA or IDE?)

But before you buy anything, try the drive in the old PC first.
 
It is a powered enclosure but as I said a very cheap one.

The drive is ide.

Currently up to my eyes in boxes, and due to be moving house soon so getting my old pc out is a bit of a pain but I shall give it a try this evening if I can.
 
1) how sure are you that the drive works? Is it spinning up when you turn the enclosure on?

2) is the drive configured as a master? If not the enclosure is unlikely to pick it up
 
rpstewart said:
1) how sure are you that the drive works? Is it spinning up when you turn the enclosure on?

2) is the drive configured as a master? If not the enclosure is unlikely to pick it up
Click to expand...

1) The drive came out of my work pc when they changed it over to a larger one for me as I was running out of space. It was working when it came out!

I know these things can die suddenly, so I shall endevour to give it a whirl on my old pc if i can get to it.

2) good point, I shall look into that!
 
I finally had a chance to test the drive today in my old pc.

Hooked it up as a slave in place of an existing drive and for come reason the pc refused to boot into windows, and just sat on the loading windows screen for ages.

Tried the drive in the enclosure again. I pc booted into windows fine. Plugged in enclosure, and it was recognised as a mass storage device, but for some reason it decided that another driver was needed for actual hard drive but it couldn't find one and the drive didn't work. I it wasn't even recognised in Windows Explorer or drive manager.

I tried the drive in the enclosure on my new pc and it did the same again.

Any one any idea what might be up? Is the drive dead?
 
I have drives from a old RAID 5 server... wish I had seen this post earlier

They are Samsung HD400LD's - 400Gb - 7200 rpm

Personally I use a Sharkoon SATA/IDE external dock... not sure if Overclockers still do it. With loads of drives for backups and moving stuff about.... drive testing.... drive clearing before disposal etc I find it invaluable. They are dead cheap (near enclosure prices when I got mine) and a better bet in the long run to having loads of external drive enclosures on the desk

Have another in a external IDE enclosure (with external power) and similiar problem... drive not seen. Took it out ... reformatted it ... popped it back in.... worked. If your drive manager/Explorer cannot see it to format it...... use a Live Linux ISO disc and use the Gparted on it... works a treat {JUST BE ABSOLUTELY SURE THAT YOU HAVE THE RIGHT DRIVE SELECTED>>>> LINUX CAN SEE AND MOUNT ALL DRIVE TYPES >>>> BE WARNED}


EDIT

Just flipped the lid off the ext encl.... the drive in that one is a Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 - 400Gb so sounds like the same problem

my jumper is actually on cable select - 2nd set of pins from left - : : : :

hope that helps
 
Last edited:
Any chance of talking me through Gparted I'm a bit of a complete newb when it comes to linux!

I could probably do it using my old netbook which wouldn't matter too much if I accidentally formatted the wrong thing...lol
 
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