Tek-Tips is the largest IT community on the Internet today!

Members share and learn making Tek-Tips Forums the best source of peer-reviewed technical information on the Internet!

  • Congratulations IamaSherpa on being selected by the Tek-Tips community for having the most helpful posts in the forums last week. Way to Go!

Internal HDD connected via USB to Vista going unresponsive!

Status
Not open for further replies.

fewleh

Vendor
Feb 14, 2008
1
Hi guys, i've joined up in the massive hope that you can fix a problem for me. I've just got a laptop, but with only 80 gig storage, theres not enough space for my mp3's, which are still on my internal HDD from the PC. I've invested in a device that allows me to plug in my IDE HDD to the USB port, and all seems well...until about 10/15 minutes into using it, it always dies. Its still on, as I can hear it whirring, but it becomes unresponsive. Is it timing out? Or maybe overheating? It did seem to last longer when I was constantly fanning it; i'm guessing no cooling = bah? When I explore the HDD in windows explorer, after it becomes unresponsive, all the folders are 'apparently' empty. Hmmm! Another thought, should the pins be set up as slave, or master etc? Could this be affecting it? At the moment, it has no pins at all.

Any ideas would be very gratefully received..!
 
The enclosure documentation should tell you how drive should be jumpered - but if its reading it initially, must be ok. Drive is ok when connected internally to PC? It may be the enclosure - could be defective. If it works ok inside PC I can't see it overheating outside in an enclosure case. No other USB problems with laptop? (eg, do you have usb memory stick - if so is that ok for moret han a few minutes?

does disconnecting and reconnecting re-establish the connection? (I've got an external drive that occasionally 'loses' its connection. Taking it 'offline' then reconnecting always brings it back. Its not like yours - usually ok for hours/days - but it does happen).
 
This thread discussed a similar problem? Did the enclosure come with any sort of drivers, or software?

thread751-1446047

----------------------------------
Ignorance is not necessarily Bliss, case in point:
Unknown has caused an Unknown Error on Unknown and must be shutdown to prevent damage to Unknown.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Part and Inventory Search

Sponsor

Back
Top