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matticus008

macrumors 68040
Original poster
Jan 16, 2005
3,330
1
Bay Area, CA
I have a new external firewire hard drive set up. It was once an internal IDE hard drive, but I put it in an enclosure to be more portable. The problem is that Windows XP will not recognize it at all. No drive letter, not present in the device manager, nothing. I connected it to my PowerBook and it works flawlessly. I've already reinstalled the Firewire controller on the PC and tried all 3 FW ports to no avail. I've swapped cables twice (though the original cable works perfectly on the PowerBook). I've scanned for new hardware and it finds nothing. Any ideas?

It's a FAT32 volume with just 4 gigs of data on it. I tried reformatting it on the Mac, and again, it still works in the PowerBook but does nothing on the PC. It had originally been a Windows file drop drive (FAT32).
 

Logik

macrumors 6502a
Apr 24, 2004
616
0
does anything else work in those firewire ports? iPod, anything? Are the drivers for your motherboard or what have you installed for those firewire devices?

For example, my machine has FireWire ports built into the motherboard. If I don't install the drivers for it, even if i plug something in, XP will not recognize that there's anything plugged in. As soon as i install the drivers it recognizes something is plugged in and then proceeds to install the correct other drivers for each individual device.
 

matticus008

macrumors 68040
Original poster
Jan 16, 2005
3,330
1
Bay Area, CA
Logik said:
does anything else work in those firewire ports? iPod, anything? Are the drivers for your motherboard or what have you installed for those firewire devices?

For example, my machine has FireWire ports built into the motherboard. If I don't install the drivers for it, even if i plug something in, XP will not recognize that there's anything plugged in. As soon as i install the drivers it recognizes something is plugged in and then proceeds to install the correct other drivers for each individual device.

Yeah, DV cameras and two iPods work. The drivers have been loaded and reloaded. I'm going to try a different ATA drive and see if that helps at all. Thanks for your help!
 

Logik

macrumors 6502a
Apr 24, 2004
616
0
matticus008 said:
Yeah, DV cameras and two iPods work. The drivers have been loaded and reloaded. I'm going to try a different ATA drive and see if that helps at all. Thanks for your help!

sometimes the controller in the external housing is picky or finicky.. heard of this before. may have to use a different controller... :-/ sad.. hopefully you figure something else out though
 

matticus008

macrumors 68040
Original poster
Jan 16, 2005
3,330
1
Bay Area, CA
Logik said:
sometimes the controller in the external housing is picky or finicky.. heard of this before. may have to use a different controller... :-/ sad.. hopefully you figure something else out though

It must just not like the onboard Firewire controller. I swapped out the hard drives in the enclosure, and again it mounted immediately on the PowerBook and not on the Windows PC. I even went to a friend's PC--no luck there either. For some reason, it will only work on Macs so far, and I've verified that the data partition is indeed FAT32 (the disk I put in temporarily was even NTFS), so there's no fundamental incompatibility. I'll try to borrow a PCI FW controller and see if that solves anything next.
 

840quadra

Moderator
Staff member
Feb 1, 2005
9,254
5,966
Twin Cities Minnesota
matticus008 said:
It must just not like the onboard Firewire controller. I swapped out the hard drives in the enclosure, and again it mounted immediately on the PowerBook and not on the Windows PC. I even went to a friend's PC--no luck there either. For some reason, it will only work on Macs so far, and I've verified that the data partition is indeed FAT32 (the disk I put in temporarily was even NTFS), so there's no fundamental incompatibility. I'll try to borrow a PCI FW controller and see if that solves anything next.

Double check what jumper settings are required by the enclosure manufacturer. If the jumpers on the drive are correct. If windows has not seen this disk before, it may be asking to index the drive in XP or Windows 2000.

In XP..
Right click "my computer" > "Manage" > "Disk Management"

then check Check for your new volume.

If it is not visable in this location, your problem is isolated to your Firewire bus. Is this drive system 1394, also does it get power from the 1394 / Firewire bus, or from a seperate power cord?
 

matticus008

macrumors 68040
Original poster
Jan 16, 2005
3,330
1
Bay Area, CA
840quadra said:
Double check what jumper settings are required by the enclosure manufacturer. If the jumpers on the drive are correct. If windows has not seen this disk before, it may be asking to index the drive in XP or Windows 2000.

In XP..
Right click "my computer" > "Manage" > "Disk Management"

then check Check for your new volume.

If it is not visable in this location, your problem is isolated to your Firewire bus. Is this drive system 1394, also does it get power from the 1394 / Firewire bus, or from a seperate power cord?

The jumpers are set to master as the instructions state (would it work on the PowerBook with incorrect jumpers? If so, I might try the various modes). It does not appear in Disk Management, Device Manager, or any command line interface. Powered by a separate AC adapter. The drive spins up as expected, but nothing happens in Windows whereas it is mounted normally in OS X (as a FAT32 Firewire volume). It's a Macally aluminum enclosure, if that helps.

I appreciate all the feedback so far. Such a frustrating kink!



EDIT/UPDATE: The drive is now working! The PC's BIOS was dated June 2004 and flashing to the most recent version (March 2005) included updates to the chipset interface, including apparently Firewire function.

I had to uninstall the FW controller from device manager, open the case and clear the CMOS, disable the FW controller, boot into Windows, delete the firewire INF, reboot, enable Firewire in the BIOS setup utility, and finally boot into Windows. The controller was reinstalled and the drive was eventually detected after about 10 minutes.

It now mounts within about 30 seconds and all is well. I also used my PowerBook to update the firmware on the FW enclosure in my troubleshooting, which did not fix the problem by itself but might have been part of the solution.
 
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