C810 USB Issues

To start with,  your USB is v1.1. 

Next,  not all Firewire drives are compatible with all systems.  Most are,  but some aren't.  If you have a drive larger than 137GB,  then you need to get a Firewire enclosure with the proper level of support (ATA-6 IIRC).  I have also had difficulties in the past using enclosures with a TI chipset in them versus enclosures with an Oxford-911 (or newer) chipset.

Lastly,  I have seen issues similar to what you describe when the drive/enclosure was not getting enough power.  I see it more commonly with enclosures for the 2.5" notebook drives which attempt to power from the USB bus,  but I have seen it with one external enclosure that used its own power supply.

Hey thanks for the info! If I understand your explanation, you are saying that a large drive (over 137GB) requires more power than a USB can "usually" produce. Correct? The one I am trying to install is a 2.5" 80GB IDE HDD that is only powered by the USB. I am trying to stay away from external power so I can stay portable.

I am going to try one more thing. I purchased a Techgear USB 2.0 2-port cardbus card for my notebook PC and will see if that bridges the 1.1 vs 2.0 installation problem. I'll be installing that shortly and try reinstalling the hard drive. I read somewhere that I should also check for the latest USB 2.0 drivers from MicroSoft. Will post the results.

Message Edited by Marsha B on 05-23-2005 10:45 AM

Actually,  each drive manufaturer has different power requirements for their drives.  The 137GB size thing is actually related to drive translation issues and not power.

You may need to get yourself one of the "two port USB cables" to providee the extra power your drive needs.  The US ports on Dell notebooks are notorious for only supplying the minimum power needed to meet the specs,  and USB 2.0 says that the port needs to provide a minimum of 500 mA to each port.  Some drives require much more than that to proerly spin-up,  so you may not get your drive to proerly spin-up without providing additional power.  You no not necessarily need to get it from an AC outlet though,  as you can get some from the PS/2 port (if your system has one),  or from another internal US port.  Some of my external enclosures came with USB cables with 2 "type A" connectors,  and one "type B" so that I could draw power from two USB ports.  Others came with a PS/2-to-power adapter to plug the drive's external power port into the 500 mA provided by the PS/2 port.  The third of my external enclosures came with a USB-to-power cable to plug into the external power plug on the drive,  and draw from a USB port on the notebook. 

The PCMCIA card for USB 2 will ehlp with your speed issues,  but it will increase the power problems as most PC-Card USB adapters provide even less power to the USB ports than do Dell system board USB ports.  You may find yourself needed to spend the money to get an enclosure with its own internal Lithium battery.  These are not cheap,  but you charge the battery at your desk,  then you use the drive off the battery when in the field.  Some of these even allow for recharging the battery from the USB port while in the field,  and in "low power consumption mode" (i.e. the drive is idling, etc).  I was looking into those at one point,  and they priced from $50-80 for the ones I saw.

Another observation I made in my working through USB power issues is that the USB cable length seems to have a big impact.  I have some 6 foot USB cables that almost never work properly,  yet I have a 4" cable that has never failed to work properly.  I found a source on-line to get 1 foot USB cables and using those,  I can run all of my drives powering from the USB ports on my IBM ThinkPad.  A Cow-orker of my cna even run almost all of them on his Inspiron 5100 only powering from the USB bus.  He still has issues running his Seagate drive from the USB power,  but that drive also has a 1000 mA spin-up power requirement,  so I am not surprised that it doesn't always work for him.

Well,  I fought for some months for power issues with my system,  so I learned more about the topic than I would like to have. 

Here is a link to one enclosure I was considering:  http://www.meritline.com/apacer-share-steno-cd-211-usb-2-0-otg-hard-drive-enclosure.html  Actually,  I'm still considering it for the USB2-on-the-go features to allow me to move pictures off my digital camera without having to take the laptop out in the field with me too.  I find the ability to copy pictues from the digital camera to the external drive without having to use a PC very appealing...  Here is another which is also available: http://www.cooldrives.com/xsdrpodimest.html  I was also looking at one that Bix had,  but I can't seem to find a link to it today.

If you search for "USB external drive enclosure 2.5 recharge battery" you should be able to find several different examples of enclosures with internal batteries.

Okay, now I'm really going to test your USB IQ!

First, I found out that if I use the USB 2.0 cardbus, I can not use my wireless card at the same time. That would be a bummer. Next I remembered you mentioned the cable that plugs into 2 USB ports. Walla... there was one in the box but I didn't know what it was for ! So, after plugging into 2 ports the drive spun up! The USB Hardware Monitor found, listed and showed no errors with the device!

Now for the bad news... "My Computer" or "Explorer" do not see the drive! What's up with that? I checked in the Device Manager and the USB drive is listed without problems. I did notice that the enhanced USB driver is not present but I guess that's because it's plugged into the older 1.0 ports.

So, if the drive is mounted and has no errors, why doesn't the system see it?

As a test, I plugged it into my 3-4 year old tower workhorse PC and the Plug-N-Play worked fine. I was able to see the drive and copy files to it without any errors. So the drive works - it's the notebook that is having a problem but I don't know what else to do to fix it.

Any more ideas?

Assuming you are using Win2000 or WinXP:
Open Windows Explroer, right-click My Computer, and select Manage.  Go find Disk Management, under Storage.  You can create new partition for your new usb drive there.

By the way, these information should be in the manual/user's guide that come with your drive.