[lordo]

Hi there, I have a question regarding a USB harddrive enclosure and the hard drive inside it. I'm having a very frustrating time trying to make it work.

I bought a Western Digital 320GB SATA harddrive (Model WD3200KS) with the intention of turning it into an external storage drive for my Dell Inspiron 6400 laptop. I bought a GreenStar 'power saving' SATA --> USB2 encolsure the other day simply because it was the least expensive option at the store I was shopping at. The install was straightforward, but after powering the unit on, it did not appear as a "new USB Device detected", as the manual said it would. I checked all connections, and even tried a different USB cable, but no luck. I tried restarting, even installing absolutely everything on the driver CD that came with the enclosure, but still no change. GreenStar is a Taiwanese company and doesn't have a website. there is no troubleshooting info in the manual at all. I'm completely at a loss... i've looked in diskmgmt.msc, but all i see are my laptop's HDD and the DVD drive. I'm certain my laptop isn't at fault, since all of my USB 1 and USB2 devices work as normal.

If anyone can help me work this out because i've missed a step, I'd appreciate it.

Thanks a bunch.

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be sure to power on the enclosure BEFORE you plug in the usb. just in case if you were doing the opposite it may not work.

[Thebinaryman]

be sure to power on the enclosure BEFORE you plug in the usb. just in case if you were doing the opposite it may not work.

[lordo]

Thanks for your post, binary. Turns out the enclosure was defective. I returned it and ordered a "Mobile Disk external data storage" enclosure from Ebay.





I installed the same HDD, formatted it with no problems although i was surprised at how many GBs I lost in windows (shows as only 298 gb). Anyways, the first week goes well, but I have found that the hard drive locks up at random moments. Nothing in particular seems to set it off. I can leave it running on its own for days at a time and the LEDs will stay blue (=ok), or I will be playing a movie off it and it'll freeze and the lights turn red. Windows locks up until i shut the power off by hitting the switch on the back of the enclosure.

I have tried to run disk checking, but each time, it will lock up at various points through the procedure. This enclosure / hdd combo gave my laptop its first BSOD, and i let windows run the startup disck check on the drive, but naturally it stalled again.

Can someone offer advice on where the kink in the system is?