External USB drive does not work in Vista...

mrochester

mrochester

mrochester

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I have 2 IDE drives in Icy Box external USB enclosures. Neither work with Vista. When I first connect them, Vista recognises a new device has been connected, and proceeds to start installing a driver. About 5 minutes later, it reports that the drive is installed, and the device is ready to use (the huge delay in installing the driver are the first alarm bells ringing). Anyway, once installed, the drive simply does not appear in my computer, or in disk management. Basically, the contents of it are completely inaccesable. The odd thing is, if I take the drive out of the enclosure and connect it via IDE directly to the motherboard, it works fine. So, it seems that the USB connection is to blame. I can't believe that a simple USB hard disk does not work though. Anyone have any ideas?

TIA,

Michael.
 
That's odd, I'm using an Enermax SATA external enclosure and it works fine.

What's your specs? If your using an Intel board, have you ran infinst_autol.exe?
 
Thanks for the quick reply. This time around, actually, the drive did show in Drive Management, but it said 'Unreadable'. My specs are Athlon64 X2 3800, NF4 mobo, 3gb ram, X800XL... etc etc. Can't think what to do to make it work. It *should* just work!
 
Does it work fine in XP?

Have a look in device manager and see if it's showing any hardware that's not installed.

Do all your other USB devices work fine?
 
Another strange thing that happens is that Vista won't startup or shutdown with the drive connected and switched on. On both occasions, it just stops until I switch the drive off. Once the drive is switched off, it continues starting up/shutting down. Both Icy Boxes work perfectly in XP. All of my other USB devices work perfectly (keyboard, mouse, MCE remote, hub, bluetooth dongle). I'm really puzzled by this.

EDIT - There are no conflicts or any other problems in device manager.
 
This is the same problem I get only its with a USB Memory stick (actually a Creative Muvo) and XP Home (so not Exactly the same problem), It works on all my other machines (USB 1.1) except my main one (USB 2.0)!...

I get the same results... Long time to install the 'Mass Storage Device' Windows says its done... but nowt!... I'll keep an eye out here to see if anyone come up with a solution! :)

(Sorry for the Hijack Dude!)
 
Hi thanks for the responses. In the BIOS I turned off the USB 2 Controller, making all the ports operate at USB 1 speed. This has solved the problem. I don't understand why though - the enclosure is capable of USB2 speeds. This is obviously only a temporary solution, as going at USB 1 speeds is not very satisfactory for an external hard disk. I'd love to know a solution if anyone finds one.
 
Last edited:
MrLOL said:
sounds like there needs to be a proper USB 2 driver

are you using a final release version from AA or beta 2 ?
Click to expand...

I'm using final release. I can't believe a simple external hard drive needs a driver :confused: Where the heck do I even get one from?!
 
How are the drives formatted?

I had strange problems with an icybox drive in different PC's (XP) but formatting to fat32 from ntfs cured all the problems, providing you can backup up the data :)
 
Vista vs USB2 Vs over 2 GB Ram

FYI,

There are reports of motherboards with Nvidia chipsets not working with USB2 devices when you have over 2GB of ram. Solution, as mentioned here already is to change to USB 1.1 in Bios or remove Ram to get to 2GB or below !! Great isn't it !!

I've the issue - hopefully a driver will cure it. This has been present in Vista since some of the last Release Candidates and should heopfully hit the fan next month, as they are recommending 2GB for Vista now.

Sorry I can't help further, check Nividia's forums for latest info, some good threads on this issue there but no solutions yet.

Mike
 
Thanks for that! I've taken 1gb of ram out giving me a total of 2gb and suddenly all my external USB drives work again. Patiently waiting for a fix.
 
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