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external HD worked until put into enclosure.-why?

B

bnp

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Dec 27, 2006
29
0
May I pick your brain?
External IDE drive,- removed from a dead PC. chock full of files.
Mounted via USB perfectly on the 'Vista PC and I am pretty certain the drive mounted on new MacBook Pro running 10.6.2 (using Wiebe's external docking device) Many documents were present and viewable on the Mac

Drive then placed in plastic bag on counter in dining room

Two weeks later I purchased a USB enclosure for the drive.
Installed easily.
Powered up immediately, I can hear the drive spinning.

Connected to the same macbook pro to which the drive had , two weeks earlier been connected, and mounted.
Except now the drive does not mount

Power is on
I can hear the drive spin
But now the drive does not mount
Disk Utility sees the drive but it does not mount
Mac asks me if I want to reformat the drive as it is unrecognizable
Drive Genius and Disk Recovery see the drive but can find no files.

What might have happened?
Did damage occur by putting in an enclosure?
I have put numerous hard drives in enclosures and never had this problem.

I know I pushed in the cables tightly and assume that the drive would not power nor the drive be seen if IDE ribbon cable and power line were not properly fastened.
I am puzzled

Anything I can do? would like to save these folks' files.
 
IDE doesn't detect problems on the cabling and prevent the system from booting; thus that could be your problem.

You may have a short somewhere as well, something pushing up against the controller board causing it to short out (if this is it, it could be the end of the drive).

Or, there could have been an ESD discharge that zapped something on the controller. Again, would be the end of the drive.

I would recommend taking the drive out of the case and try it again as a bare drive. If it powers up and works then carefully reinstall it and see if it works. If not, could be the controller of the USB to IDE board in the case.
 
would the Mac to ask me to reformat the drive or am I misunderstanding something?
 
bnp said:
would the Mac to ask me to reformat the drive or am I misunderstanding something?
Click to expand...

Depends. Typically I'd say no, but noise can do odd things. Now, has the drive been moved around, or otherwise handled poorly while out of the machine? That could cause it to lose it's mind. Electric fields, magnets, etc can also scramble drives.
 
CylonGlitch said:
Possibly. Not mishandled but moved around. I noticed that it was taken out of the plastic bag/sleeve in which i placed it into a larger plastic bag.
The drive has no bottom plate so of course there was the issue of exposure.
I will do what you suggest,open the new enclosure; as with many cases or enclosures, the drive cable has to be folded to so the enclosure closes. Possibly folding it has caused the problem . However, having worked on a number of desktop PCs,in which drive cables are folded, stuffed , bent etc, that has never made a difference in functioning. I wonder if disconnecting my Wiebe Drive Dock might have damaged the drive.

Another weird thing is that while the drive is recognized as a USB drive needing formating both Disk Utility and ProSoft software see it as a "2.2T" sized drive.Impossible.The drive is a 250 gig IDE drive (Seagate as I recall). So I wonder if that mis recognition means something
thank you for your suggestions.
Click to expand...
 
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