How do I get an External Hard Drive Case to work?

Question

My computer sees the empty hard drive case itself and has assigned it a drive letter. However it does not see any of the drives that I install. It just keeps asking me to put in a disk. I have tried installing several old hard drives from some of my old computers and it cannot see any of them. I have tried everything I can think of to no aval.

Icannot do any formatting of any of the old drives I have tried. As I said the computer knows the empty case is hooked up and has assigned a drive letter to it.
It does not see any of the drives I install and keeps asking me to put a disk into the drive. My computer thinks the drive is empty when in fact it is not.

Answer 1

either the drive is not connected correctly or the enclosure is bad or you need to initialize the drive through the Administrator tools. Be sure that the drive is power up and spinning first. Then be sure that you have the cable connected correctly. One way works the other does not. Make sure that you use the "Cable Select" position of the drive selector. Many IDE cables can be connected 180 degrees out. If all is correct and running, time to check the Computer Management (XP or 2K) under Administrator Tools (in the Control Panel), for Win98se or WinME then you need to get the correct driver for the case to function properly. If you have old FAT or FAT32 drives that are already formatted then you should not be having initialization problems with XP or Win2k. If you have new drives you may have to inititalize them with Computer Management. If you have old NTFS drives then you may have to import the drive with Disk Management under Computer Management.

Answer 2

How to Repartition and Format a Slave Hard Drive
How to Repartition a Slave Hard Drive
If you want to add a second hard drive (slave drive) to your computer, you need to make sure that the jumpers on both the master (original) and slave (new drive) are set according to the manufacturer's instructions first so that your computer can detect the hard drives. Verify that your hard ware is installed correctly, and then follow these steps:
1.Click Start, point to Run, and then type command (Note that the cmd command only works on Windows 2000-based computers).
2.At a commandprompt, type fdisk, and then press ENTER. The following menu is displayed:
3.1. Create DOS partition or Logical DOS Drive
4.2. Set active partition
5.3. Delete partition or Logical DOS Drive
6.4. Display partition information
5. Change current fixed disk drive
Note that menu option 5 is available only if you have two physical hard dives on your computer.
7.Press 5, and then press ENTER. When you do this, the selection changes from the physical disk 1 (master) to the physical disk 2 (slave).
8.Press 1 to select the Create DOS partition or Logical DOS Drive menu option, press ENTER, press 2 to select the Create Extended DOS Partition menu option, and then press ENTER. When you make your slave drive an extended MS-DOS partition, your drive letters does not change. For example, if the first drive contains partition C and partition D, your slave drive becomes D unless you set the slave drive as an extended partition. If you skip this step and just create another primary MS-DOS partition for the slave drive, the new drive becomes drive D and what used to be drive D, changes to drive E.
9.You can partition the slave drive to make other logical drives just as you did with the original master drive. If your computer cannot detect the new drive, you may need to add the following line to your Config.sys file, where drive is a letter that is greater than the last drive letter on the computer (including the CD-ROM drive):
Lastdrive=drive
10.After you finish using the Fdisk tool, format the new partitions so that you can use them. After you press ESC to quit the Fdisk tool, restart your computer to start Windows.
How to Format a Slave Hard Drive
To format your new partition or partitions, use one of the following methods, depending on your file system. For a FAT16 file system:
1.Double-click My Computer, right-click the partition that you just created, click Format, click Full, and then click Start.
2.After the format, procedure is complete, click OK to close the dialog box.
For a FAT32 file system:
1.Click Start, point to Programs, point to Accessories, and point to System Tools, click Drive Converter (FAT32), and then click Next.
2.In the Drives box, click the drive that you want to convert to the FAT32 file system.
3.Click Next, and then click OK.
4.Click Next, click Next, and then click Next again.
5.When the conversion procedure is finished, click Finish.
NOTE: Do not use the /s switch that you used when you set up drive C. All you need to do is to format the drive or drives so that you can use them (for example, if you created two new drive letters, you need to format both drives).

Answer 3

You may need to initialize/format each drive if they are SATA or brand spanking new. In XP, check under Administrative Tools/Computer Management/Disk Management. If you can't find "Administrative Tools," check under Control Panel or ask the Admin of your computer to do it.

Answer 4

Set the drive hardware to IDE master drive. Some USB HD case need to do that.

Answer 5

click on the external drive in My Computer then right click and click format

format ntfs not fat32
quick format, it will take 10-15 min depends on the drive

Answer 6

check external power supply
check usb is usb 2 not 1.1
check external hdd is set to master and cable is correctly fixed
check you system has usb support
what disk is it asking for ? a windows disk or driver disk ?

Answer 7

Check the power

Answer 8

*NOTE* all the External Drives\Cases REQUIRE that the drive be pinned as MASTER drives.

Answer 9

You must check your motherboard is working or not.