HDD experts needed

[adhoc 0]

hey all,

 

i recently bought a 30gb creative nomad zen xtra. for all those who dont know what that is - it's a laptop disk drive (aka 2.5" hdd) based mp3 jukebox.

 

i bought it with the full intent of modding it by swapping the drive inside with an 80gb drive. this i managed to do successfully. if not for the 30gb label outside, you wouldnt know that the player was not meant to have an 80gb capacity. in essence, it works perfectly with the 80gb snug inside (do take note here).

 

what did i do with the now-spare 30gb? i intended to convert it into a portable 2.5" removable usb2.0 hdd. to this end i purchased one of those aluminium casings with a pcb that connects directly to my 2.5" drive and offers usb2.0 transfers.

 

so i fixed everything up, and plugged it in. my system (win xp pro, all sps installed) recognised the drive (Fujitsu MHT2030AT), auto-installed drivers and told me that 'my mass storage device [is] now ready for use.'

 

BUT i couldnt use it. simply put, the computer did not recognise ANYTHING abt the drive, other than it's name. it ALSO did NOT show up as a removable drive under 'my computer'. i can ONLY find out abt the drive's existence through system manager, and even then it CANNOT identify the drive's capacity correctly, or anything else it correctly. attempts to populate the drive info screen result in a message telling me that my drive is not formatted in a way that windows can read.

 

i simply cannot get my computer to recognise the drive in any form OTHER than a direct IDE connection (with a handly 40 to 44 pin adaptor). and WHEN i DO connect it via IDE, i CAN do a low-level DOS format (using win98 startup disk) - fdisk, etc etc.

 

but i've formatted the drive at least 15 times now - at times doing a normal <format C:> and at other times doing a <format C: /s> after fdisking and removing-then-recreating the primary DOS partition. each time this process would complete successfully - it would tell me that i had successfully formatted 28517mb in FAT32 in one primary DOS partition. scandisk (native DOS ver through win98 startup disk, not winxp version) would be able to completely run through and verfiy that the FAT and data areas are fine. BUT the drive would still remain unrecognisable in winxp and win98, which i tried out of desperation.

 

i've verified that the casing+usb2.0pcb is not to blame - it works perfectly with another 20gb 2.5" hdd i have.

 

a good friend of mine raised the point that perhaps my 30gb drive is not 'complete' in the sense that it might lack some controllers - but i'm confused - for all intents and purposes, this SHOULD be a perfectly normal drive (ie not lacking any controllers). after all didnt i replace it with a COMPLETE (ie definitely not lacking any controllers) 80gb that was meant for the mass market? and didnt my 80gb drive work PERFECTLY in the zen?

 

and finally, in case you're wondering, i did replace the 30gb back in the zen again and it DID work PERFECTLY in the zen, so why not here?? it spins up like it has always done, and there is activity. it is NOT a dead drive.

 

help!!

[hacknet 0]

theres a possiblilty that the drive is screwed.

[adhoc 0]

please reread my first post before posting.

[Q00 0]

I have a friend who is using the nomad hdd drive as normal drive. Works fine after a format in a usb 2.0 casing.

 

Quite curious though...

[seiko_citizen 0]

hmm... never tried with a nomad hdd, but never had a prob after formatting

[red_ryder 0]

Did you partition and format the 30gb drive using Winxp Disk Management? Try it if you haven't.

 

If have and still got problem, then you're out of luck. Do you use a thumbdrive or card reader in your system? Any problems before? The reason I ask is because I also experienced your problem on my system. It simply couldn't work with USB based mass storage devices. Can detect but doesn't appear in windows explorer. I only managed to solve the problem by formatting and reinstalling a clean winxp.

 

 

[adhoc 0]

wow, red ryder, that's quite an extree solution huh? the reformat reinstall xp i mean.

 

ok strangely my drive has begun WORKING NORMALLY, but ONLY if i leave the cover off. ????????????????

[Naimed 0]

Maybe its the spin up. Some chassis have tighter grip and some have a not-so-tight-fit. I need to press down on the casing and it will detect correctly.

 

If your USB casing uses a single USB connector for tapping power, the comp might have difficulty detecting the partition. Mine comes with an additional keyboard socket so I can tap that as well (double power connections work all the time). I also assume your comp is USB 2.0 compatible.

[tropicalrips 0]

try under "Winxp Disk Management" there should be a few options when u right click on the "removeable" drive colum.

i think the XP detected the drive but it not "assign" or "activated"

if it shows up on Disk Management it should be a easy to fix, i can't remember if it was "assign" or "activate" (me still using win98 )

 

if all else fails, try looking for something call "zap.exe" its a utility from Maxtor , can download from Maxtor website, it "zaps" the HDD returning everything to factory state, basically it "writes zeros" to the root bios of the hardisk, this will removin everything including any non-dos partitions or any type of code that was previously done.

but be warned, this zap thing is NOT reversible, what ever is on the drive will be totally lost (factory state)

[Firefox 0]

Dos format is not a true low level format. You can use either Manufacturer provided low level format utilities or use BIOS/ controller card low level format to make the disk usable.

[JTT 0]

This sounds very much like a windows driver problem. You do need a special, albeit generic, driver to support external USB memory devices.

 

To find out if you've got it (and if your system is detecting the disk), go to 'Control Panel', 'System Manager', and scroll down to the USB Controller section at the bottom of the list. Do this without the disk plugged in. Now plug in the disk, and within a few seconds you should see 'USB Mass Storage Device' added to the list. If you don't have the (correct) driver, then it won't be.

 

The drivers for Win98SE, and possibly other Win versions, come as a set of 4 files which will enable support for USB HDDs and USB card readers eg: Compact Flash etc. They are:

 

genedisk.inf

genestor.pdr

geneuide.inf

geneuide.sys

 

Hope this helps

 

JohnT

 

 

[JTT 0]

Sorry, but ..............

 

I didn't note that you have had the USB setup working with an alternative 20Gb disk.

 

JohnT

[adhoc 0]

hi all - i'm pleased to announce that my drive works PERFECTLY now.

 

remember my last post abt the drive working with the cover off?

 

i discovered the source of the problem.

 

the $*&@%$ aluminium drive cover was shorting the soldered pins that stuck out on the bottom of the pcb.

 

i kid you not. i thouught that i had come across almost every single problem a computer could throw at me - but this, this is a new one.

 

i discovered by accident when i tried using the drive with the casing on, touched it, and got a minor electric shock.

 

so what to do? drive out and buy a new usb2.0 casing. using the momobay ux-2. fantastic. and good looking to boot.

[Gradesm 0]

Could have used those foam that comes with certain PC parts like motherboard as a buffer to seperate it... buy new one waste money only...