IDE HDD in external box: only 32 gigs???

[sammich]

Just today, I bought a cheapo Samsung 400gig hard drive to replace a failing 60gig in an eternal IDE firewire box.

But the life of me, I can't figure out what's wrong. I plugged the cables to the HDD correctly, and I've read the manual about how to set up the pins etc. But the only way I can get the drive to appear on in Disk Utility is to set it up to limit 32 gig mode as slave. I've tried every >32gig combination but it doesn't work.

Any ideas? Could it be the firewire box?
Thanks.

 

[admiraldennis]

The chipset might be really crappy and only support small disks.

 

[sammich]

The chipset might be really crappy and only support small disks.

I had considered this and didn't want to believe it, I think it's an Oxford chipset inside. I've been reading around and saw that if you put too large a drive for the chipset to handle, it will only show say the first 128 gig (i think is the max for ata/66).

Won't mine at least do that?

 

[displaced]

For an external-enclosure drive, I'm surprised it showed up at all when set to slave! A drive in an external enclosure is 99.9999% of the time set to Master (since it's the only drive connected to the enclosure's IDE controller).

If the drive isn't working when set to Master and nothing else (no limiting, no cable-select, etc) then something is really amiss.

You'd have to have a positively ancient enclosure for the full size of the drive not to be recognised -- over 4 or more years old at the very least!

 

[macphisto]

I have an external Firewire case, and it had an Oxford chipset in it. It however, was pre "big drive" and so it only see and format to a fraction of the size. Do a google search on the chipset model and you should be able to find out what it supports.

 

[Sun Baked]

I bought a cheap $35 FW case at Compusa ... might be time to update the cheap case also.

If you don't mind USB 2.0 only, the cases are real inexpensive.

 

[sammich]

For an external-enclosure drive, I'm surprised it showed up at all when set to slave! A drive in an external enclosure is 99.9999% of the time set to Master (since it's the only drive connected to the enclosure's IDE controller).

Okay, it seems that it only works in slave 32gig limit mode. So obviously cable select mode works as well. Master doesn't work. Perhaps it might be something to do with...

You'd have to have a positively ancient enclosure for the full size of the drive not to be recognised -- over 4 or more years old at the very least!

...my positively ancient enclosure. RIGHT, I'll admit I didn't do my research on this and I assumed that stuff should just work. This enclosure is probably 8 years old . So I've learnt my lesson, I will just pay the restocking fee for the drive on return.

TWIST: clicking noises coming from the BRAND NEW hard drive. Now, not only does it exhibit behavior's like my outgoing dying 60 gig-er drive, it will start clicking whenever the computer starts using it (like me trying to format the drive for return).

Umm, return for warranty replacement? Possible that the enclosure did this to it? Is this my fault? I've treated it like a baby since I opened it.