PC hard drive to USB hard drive

[TheJudge1986]

I have a PC hard drive:

Hitachi Deskstar
500Gb
MODEL: HDT25050VLa360

And I purchased an external hard drive enclosure:

NexStar TX 2.5" Sata Hard Drive Enclosure.

It came with a Y USB cable, and the top where the circuit board is pops out of the enclosure. It fits on my hard drive and when I plug it into my HP laptop the light on the connector turns on but my computer doesnt pick it up at all.

Any help please?

 

[ComputerGuy55]

I have seen this with laptops before where when it is not in "High preformance" power mode, sometimes it will not supply enough power to the External drive. Disconnect the hard drive from the laptop. In the bottom right hand corner near the time, you will see your battery, select it and change the Power settings to be on "High Preformance" and then connect the drive. and see if it is recognized.

 

[TheJudge1986]

still didnt recognize it. the laptop im on is running windows 7 and the computer the harddrive was connected to had windows xp a pirated version. does that make a difference?

 

[ComputerGuy55]

No, the hard drive being recognized would be a physical thing, previous OS shouldn't hide it. Have you checked Disk Managment?

Right click My Computer,
Click Manage
Select Disk Management on the left hand pane.
In the right hand pane, look on the bottom half to see if the disk is being seen at all, maybe it is being shown as "offline" ?

If nothing else, look in Device Manager (on the left hand side of the window that you have open)
Under Universal Serial Bus Controllers, check and see if there is one for Removable Storage, if there is one, right click and "Uninstall" it.

After this, right click and Scan for New Hardware. See if it reinstalls.

 

[TheJudge1986]

I did both these steps and disk manager had nothing and the options in serial bus controllers is:

RealTek USB 2.0
Standard PCI to USb x2
" " OpenHCD x2
USB Composite dev.
Usb Root x4

 

[ComputerGuy55]

Are you connecting this hard drive directly into a USB port? Does this drive work on another system?

 

[TheJudge1986]

it worked befor on the pc. and then the power support went on it. I never had an issue befor and yes i have it connected by usb

 

[ComputerGuy55]

I mean do you have it connected directly to USB? Not through a USB hub or an extention cord or something. Also, what PSU is in it now? (Wattage)

 

[TheJudge1986]

It is connected using a hub. the nexstar device I put in my first post.

 

[Doctor John]

I apologise in advance if I'm suggesting the first thing you did, but have you connected the drive to one, or two USB sockets? Some external drives don't get enough juice from one socket, if they are only USB powered (is the "Y-cable" you mentioned possibly for this purpose?).

 

[ComputerGuy55]

Yeah, I should have asked that Doctor John, make sure both USB Cables are plugged in if there are two, as well, can you connect this device directly into the USB ports on the motherboard in the back of the computer?

The hub can only supply so much power, and even if no other devices are connected to it sometimes external hard drives will not be recognized/get enough power from extention cables, hubs, make sure to connect directly into a USB port.

 

[TheJudge1986]

Yea that didnt work either. I know the hard drive works fine, but maybe doing it this way just doesnt work with the hard drive.

Waste of money.

 

[ComputerGuy55]

If the hard drive works perfectly but the external hard drive bay is not, then see if you can return the item and get a better model.

Recently I had a brand new Nextar 2.5" SATA drive bay not read the hard drive at all.. It powered it on and you could feel it spinning up, but the computer wouldn't recognize it, attach it to another external bay and it worked fine.

Some are just defective.