External FireWire HDD enclosure not recognized

Question

I purchased an external FireWire enclosure, Plumax PM-525-C2-PTB from DealSonic and I also bought a 6-4 pin FireWire connector cable. I mounted a Maxtor 160 GB drive in there. I am dual booting Win2k with SP4, and XP with SP1, so I have access to both OS's. The directions from Plumax say that 2k/XP support plug and play with FireWire and that it'll show up as a removable drive. I tried that and nothing happened. I hear the drive spinning and the LED comes on on the enclosure, but nothing in Device Manager, Disk Management Utility, or Unplug / Eject hardware. It is as if the FireWire is not being recognized at all. I understand that once it is recognized I will have to format the drive, but it's not even showing up under Disk Management as unformatted yet. I have a Dell Inspiron 8100 laptop and currently have the drive set as slave. I called Maxtor and the drive seems to be working fine, it's the enclosure that's not showing up. Any ideas on how I can get the enclosure recognized on either OS. Once I get the enclosure working then I can format the drive.  Are they any ways to test out my FireWire port?  Any help is much appreciated.  Thanks in advance.

mrdat · Answer

Have you tried the HDD as Master? or Cable Select? I forgot what i set mine to at home.....

RShaye · Answer

I set it to Master and the drive was recognized instantly on both OS's.  A quick format in PQ Partition Magic and I'm writing data now. Thanks for the help.

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