[dsmith402]

i just recently did a clean install of windows 7, with the generous help of wannabe1 (kudos to him for being such a genius)anyways now i'm having an issue with my 2 bay external hard drive.. i'll do the best to describe the situation before i add print screens and clutter the page up, plus i'm at work and simply can't at the moment


if i have both hard drives inserted what happens is my computer only recognizes the drive in slot A, however, if i remove the drive in slot A then the other drive along with all the info will be recognized, and visa versa. Now if i have both drives inserted (both have info on them) and i go to Computer Management and select Disk Management it will show that one of the drives is unallocated. not sure why that is, but i'm guessing this has something to do with the problem since both drives have needed info on them.

i hope this helps paint a clear picture, if not, like i said i'll post screen prints later of what it looks like. also if anyone needs extra information that was not provided feel free to ask

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maybe these will help...

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[dsmith402]

maybe these will help...

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[wannabe1]

You again...

What brand enclosure are you using? Knowing the model number if it has one might also be helpful.

Many dual drive enclosures have selectors for setting how the enclosure utilizes the drives. It appears that yours might be set up as a JBOD with a 1TB limit...but I won't know that for sure without knowing what enclosure you have.

Edited by wannabe1, 07 April 2010 - 04:57 PM.
Correct grammatical errors before sari sees them

[dsmith402]

heh, yep its me again!

let's see....i have a rosewill, its a black case with a R2 on it. there is a bar code on the side with the numbers: 17182144080800357. otherwise when i open it up i see another series of numbers reading: ATM0807020020.....

i did find the listing on newegg where i originally bought it, "Western Digital My Book Essential 500GB USB 2.0 External Hard Drive WDG1U5000N"
newegg WD external hard drive

[wannabe1]

This is two separate drives? I was under the impression it was a single "dual drive" enclosure like THIS.

Let me regroup a little...

Each drive works when installed by itself, but only one drive shows properly when both are installed...correct?

Try disconnecting both drives, reboot the machine, and plug the drives in one at a time...giving each time to install. Does this make any difference?

Seems odd that it would see the drives when connected individually, but not when both are connected.

[peter99]

Sorry to jump in, found this at WD site

If the drive is not being recognized, disconnect the power adapter from the surge protector/UPS and plug directly into the wall. Sometimes, surge protectors diminish the power being supplied as more devices are added to them


Cons: The drive worked initially, but then suddenly and seemingly without reason stopped working. XP would only recognize a "USB Device" and then launch the driver wizard. XP SP2 had no driver for it, and neither did WD's site (that I could find). I did an internet search and found a posting where someone had my exact problem, called WD and was told to plug it into the wall directly. BINGO! As soon as I did that it was recognized again; and come to think of it I *had* plugged more stuff into that power strip when the drive quit working. I experimented a bit, and I could reproduce the problem by plugging it into a power strip with lots of other devices, and the problem went away as soon as I plugged it in by itself or on a less crowded power strip. I hope the other reviewers that had this problem had a chance to try this before returning a perfectly good drive.

[dsmith402]

sorry i totally lied about which external hard drive case it was lol my bad... i have too much stuff that i've ordered from new egg here is the link for what i currently am using and the one i am having the issues with

[url="http://Rosewill%20R2-JBOD%203.5"%20USB%202.0%20DUAL-BAY%20External%20Enclosure%20-%20Retail"]Rosewill External Case[/url]

once again i apologize for providing the wrong information

[dsmith402]

although i will have to try on plugging it from the surge protector to see if that is indeed the case with this

[wannabe1]

Have you used this enclosure before where it would recognize the installed drives as single-separate drives?

I ask because the enclosure you reference (link is broken BTW) is designed as JBOD...which means it will try to combine the two drives so they appear as one large drive.

[dsmith402]

i've been using this external hard drive with 2 hard drives in it for a while, now and it would read them as separate hard disks. it was not until i got windows 7 install that it started having this issue. i'm going to try and put that link in again so the external case

Rosewill again

[dsmith402]

i also unplugged the external case from my surge protector and plugged it straight into the wall and still having the same issue

[wannabe1]

Ok...it's a JBOD.

Do you have a lot of data on the drives? Do you have enough space to move all the data from one drive to the other?

What we want to do is end up with all the data on a drive that shows up (or another temporary location) while the other is shown as Unallocated Space. Then format the Unallocated Space and give it a drive letter. That will make it show as a separate drive and you can move your data back onto it.

I don't recommend using the JBOD function as designed for the simple reason that if one drive goes bad, there's a good chance you'll lose data from both drives...much like you would if one drive in a RAID0 array dies.

Doing it the way I suggest will make this far less likely as the drives will be treated as individual drives rather than a combined space.

[dsmith402]

i do not have enough free space to put on 1 single drive, any suggestions to help slim the file sizes down while i move things around??? i'll try to go thru both drives and delete some things i could do without for the moment

[happyrock]

FYI..a little off topic here but it has to do with surge protectors screwing things up...
about 3 years ago I was setting up a network using SMC Networks' HomePlug that uses the house electrical wiring instead of running cat 5 or wireless (very large house)...long story short...after many hours troubleshooting I discovered you cannot plug them into a surge protector or they will not work...plugging directly in wall power solved everything...

Edited by happyrock, 10 April 2010 - 06:13 AM.

[dsmith402]

phewwww, that was a long and painful process lol i went through and trimmed down some files to squeeze everything on one disk.... just formatted the second disk and now have both showing, thanks again wannabe1