80GB SATA 2.5" w/External Enclosure

[prodigiousfool]

I bought an 80 GB SATA drive from a guy on here who was upgrading his drive in his MBP. The drive is a Seagate Momentus 5400 RPM 80GB SATA HDD, model # ST98823AS (Which is also the same as my Mac Mini [see sig])Link to Seagate. I got it becuase I wanted to pop it into an external enclosure, and have it act as a go-between and a temp storage for my Windows box and my Macs, as well as to take to class with me.

So I got the enclosure, and formatted it and re-partitioned it (it did have boot camp on there, from when the guy was using it) and I've tried the MS-DOS/FAT32, the Journaled, and the UNIX filesystems, but in every single case, it refuses to be recognized by my Windows box. It works on all 3 of my Macs, in every format. The external enclosure is a Bytecc BT-280 Series Link to Bytecc

So my question is this, is it becuase of the fact that it is a Mac Harddrive that it isn't being read by Windows? Or is it more likely an issue with the external enclosure that can't be read by Windows? I know both of them work, since they work in my Macs, but I wasn't sure if there was something special about the Mac Harddrives that would not allow it to be read by Windows, despite being even in FAT32.

Thanks for your help and I look forward to your responses.

Dane

 

[xfiftyfour]

It's not showing up in windows because it's formatted for a mac. I solve this type of problem by installing MacDrive in windows, and that works like a charm.

 

[prodigiousfool]

It's not showing up in windows because it's formatted for a mac. I solve this type of problem by installing MacDrive in windows, and that works like a charm.

Great suggestion, but I've done that, and the thing is, Windows isn't even detecting that there is a drive connected. I used the CD that came with the enclosure, but for starters those drivers are for Win98, and so I don't know how well they'd work, but it's almost as if it refused to Plug-n-Play correctly.

Additionally, Fat32 is a native Windows partition, even formatted from a Mac, Windows would still regonize it's own partition type

 

[xfiftyfour]

Could be the USB enclosure/drive somehow got messed up upon first plug-in or something like that, I've had it happen a couple times with unreliable enclosures. Give this a shot... you'll want to remove all the grayed out "usb" or "harddrive" devices that show up after you run this, then plug your device in and see what happens....

1. Click Start. Click Run. Type cmd and press OK.

2. Type "set DEVMGR_SHOW_DETAILS=1" (without quotation marks) and press Enter.

3. Type "set DEVMGR_SHOW_NONPRESENT_DEVICES=1" (without quotation marks) and Press Enter.

4. Type "start devmgmt.msc" (without quotation marks) and click press Enter.

5. Click View. Click Show hidden devices.

6. Click "+" to expand Unknown devices and USB devices.

7. If there any unknown devices (including grayed out devices), right click it and click Uninstall.

8. Reboot the computer.

 

[prodigiousfool]

Could be the USB enclosure/drive somehow got messed up upon first plug-in or something like that, I've had it happen a couple times with unreliable enclosures. Give this a shot... you'll want to remove all the grayed out "usb" or "harddrive" devices that show up after you run this, then plug your device in and see what happens....

1. Click Start. Click Run. Type cmd and press OK.

2. Type "set DEVMGR_SHOW_DETAILS=1" (without quotation marks) and press Enter.

3. Type "set DEVMGR_SHOW_NONPRESENT_DEVICES=1" (without quotation marks) and Press Enter.

4. Type "start devmgmt.msc" (without quotation marks) and click press Enter.

5. Click View. Click Show hidden devices.

6. Click "+" to expand Unknown devices and USB devices.

7. If there any unknown devices (including grayed out devices), right click it and click Uninstall.

8. Reboot the computer.

Thanks for the help. I followed the steps, opened up the Device Manager, and nothing was out of the ordinary. When I first plugged it in, I seriously thought I had a dud becuase it lieterally didn't do anything. I plugged it in and unplugged it over and over, and still no change. That's when I got the idea to test it on the Macs to make sure that it wasn't poo-pooed. I know my USB ports are working, I'm tested with a few different devices and they are plug-n-play, so i know it's not the usb ports or even just one port. I'm going to take it home with me tomorrow and see if maybe it's my particular windows box (i have a spare box and a server at home), maybe i can make some headway there. Thanks for your help again.

Dane

 

[prodigiousfool]

Well I tried it out on my server and it seemed to work just fine. So it seems to be working which just means that for whatever reason, it's just an issue with my main windows machine. I'm glad at least that I know that it works on the PC, that gives me something the work off of. Thanks for the help and suggestions, I'll play with it some more since I know that it's 100% fully functional.