strange hard drive behavior - puzzle?

maxwelltfmaxwelltf
edited December 2008 in Hardware
OK - here's the problem. A 500GB drive works fine in external drive enclosure A. No corruption when storing more than 127GB. So I conclude External drive enclosure A is 48-bit LBA compatible. A 400GB drive works fine inside my PC connected to a PCI controller card that also supports 48-bit LBA. When I remove the 400GB from the PC and place it in external drive enclosure A, it no longer functions properly. It either doesn't appear in windows or file functions are super slow - and eventually it just ends up not working. When I put it back in the PC on the PCI controller card, it appears to work fine. I run CHKDSK on it and it is fine.

Background:
1. All drives are IDE and set to cable select. (tried setting to master but that didnt seem to make a difference)
2. External drive enclosure A uses firewire to connect to a PC.
3. None of the drives contain operating systems.
4. All PC's are running windows XP Pro SP2.

Comments

  • kryystkryyst Ontario, Canada
    edited December 2008
    1st does the 500gb drive work fine in your PC?

    2nd was the 400gb originally in an older pre 48lba system that had to have harddrive tools run on it to gain access to the full partition?
  • maxwelltfmaxwelltf
    edited December 2008
    1st: does the 500gb drive work fine in your PC? Yes it works fine. What I mean by this is it is visible, file copies and moves seem to work fine, and it seems to move & copy files OK when storing more than 127GB on the drive.

    2nd: was the 400gb originally in an older pre 48lba system that had to have harddrive tools run on it to gain access to the full partition? I do not know. When I got it, it was wiped as a RAW drive. What are these hard drive tools you mention?
  • kryystkryyst Ontario, Canada
    edited December 2008
    If it was a raw drive then what I was talking about doesn't apply.
  • maxwelltfmaxwelltf
    edited December 2008
    what is a RAW drive anyway?

    So where does that leave things? Additional thoughts? It's rather strange - but there always seems to be a reason when things like this happen with computers.
  • LeonardoLeonardo Wake up and smell the glaciers Eagle River, Alaska Icrontian
    edited December 2008
    I thought we already had a thread on this?
  • maxwelltfmaxwelltf
    edited December 2008
    I added a final comment to the previous thread, which was more about formatting and not being able to complete the format - windows was giving an error message at the end "unable to complete the format". I determined the problem was trying to do the format over an external firewire link. For some reason, it was not working. So I connected the drive to the second IDE master channel on the PCI controller card, and was able to complete the format.

    This thread now is about why the drive works fine when connected to the IDE controller card, but then does not seem to function properly when placed in the external drive enclosure.

    It is a bit of a mystery at the moment.
  • kryystkryyst Ontario, Canada
    edited December 2008
    RAW format is just basically an unformated drive to any particular drive format, think of it like a blank slate.

    As for why it doesn't work, no idea. Could be as simple as your external enclosure doesn't like that drive.

    The enclosure your using is it a generic empty enclosure that you are supposed to be able to put any drive into or was it an external firewire drive that you've opened up to flip drives around in?
  • maxwelltfmaxwelltf
    edited December 2008
    It was an external firewire drive that I opened up to flip drives around in. What would be particular about drives - I mean these drives adhere to standards, IDE, and the controller adheres to the same standards, IDE. It just doesnt sit right that the problem would be something like "it doesnt like that drive".
  • LeonardoLeonardo Wake up and smell the glaciers Eagle River, Alaska Icrontian
    edited December 2008
    As I wrote in the other thread, some drives just will not work - for whatever reason - with an enclosure while another drive the same capacity but different brand will. It's just the way it is. Fact.
  • maxwelltfmaxwelltf
    edited December 2008
    So is the best path forward to buy a generic external drive enclosure and put the 400GB drive in that and cross my fingers?

    Is there anyway I can be 100% certain that the drive enclosure I buy supports 48-bit LBA? Drive enclosures always seem to be so vague on this topic.
  • kryystkryyst Ontario, Canada
    edited December 2008
    Leo's right. That being said one other thing I'm thinking since your dealing with an external drive and not an external enclosure.

    I'll bet the drive that it originally had in it is formated FAT32. The drive your trying to put in it is probably formated NTFS. The enclosure isn't designed to read NTFS. If you want that enclosure to be able to read your other drive you'll probably have to reformat it to fat32.
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