IDE to USB Adapter - need driver

[thewolfe]

IDE to USB Adapter - need driver

I purchased a Vantec CB-IUSB20 so I could hookup a slave drive temporarily.

However, I am unable to "see" the drive and the mini disk that they gave me only shows "card reader" drivers.

I'm running it on a WinXP machine.

I used it originally a month or so ago on another machine but no luck on this one.

I've tried a Maxtor 30GB and a Seagate 200 GB.

[mjc]

XP shouldn't need specific drivers for USB storage devices...are the proper motherboard drivers installed and does USB work, in general, on the machine having the problem seeing the drive?

[jlreich]

Make sure the drives are jumpered as the manual says it needs to be.

These adapters can be funny sometimes. I have an adapter that says the jumper should be set to master or master/no slave, which usually works fine, but I had a drive the other day that would only work with it set to cable select. Go figure... :rolleyes:

So if nothing else try the jumpers on different settings.

[thewolfe]

Don't know about the mobo drivers.

All the USB ports work.

I found a driver and installed it through the Device Mgr.

There was an "!" mark beside one of the USB notations.

I was able to "see" the 30 GB once and now that won't work after trying the other hd.

[thewolfe]

Tried different jumper settings, no go.

[johnny_quest]

My USBtoIDE adapter is very flakey on the order the connections are made as well. Mine needs to be jumpered as master hard drive. Mine has to have the hard drive adapter connected to the drive, power it up, wait a minute, then connect it to the computer... as opposed to having everything connected then hitting the power. Try it different ways.

[thewolfe]

I can see the 30GB now but not the 200GB

[Sylvander]

"There was an "!" mark beside one of the USB notations."
a. Go to "Device Manager".
b. View devices "By Connection".
c. Expand the hardware device tree [highlight the little PC at the top, click "Numlock + *", then "Numlock" again]
d. Go down beneath "PCI Bus" to where the "!" is.
[The image below shows how mine looks with USB HDD]
You should have, but probably have something different...
USB Enhanced Host Controller
___USB 2.0 Root Hub
______USB Mass Storage Device
_________Your USB HDD
What does your arrangement look like?

e. How is this "!" item described?
f. In "Properties", what explanation is given why the "device" isn't enabled?

[thewolfe]

I get the 200GB drive powered up, plug in the USB to the computer and I heard a sound on the computer.

I looked in the Device Manager and saw USB Mass Storage device. Then in about 20 seconds I heard another sound and the USB Mass Storage device is gone.

[Sylvander]

Try copying the following that I'll now do...

1. Make certain the USB HDD is powered off.

2. Connect the USB HDD to the USB 2.0 socket.

3. Go to "Device Manager >> View >> Devices by connection >> highlight the PC icon at the top of the tree and click "Numlock + *" then "Numlock" to expand the tree".
Your tree will expand, but there will be no USB HDD displayed.

4. Power on the USB HDD.
The hardware tree will disappear [screen will go blank].
After a delay of some seconds, the hardware tree will reappear, but this time the "USB Mass Storage Device" should be listed with the HDD listed below it.

The above is what happens on my PC, see if it happens ok on yours.
If your "USB Mass Storage Device" appears briefly then disappears, does some "Unknown Device" take its place in some other location on the tree?
Is there a "!" against anything?

[thewolfe]

I had to plug the USB in last but got "Mass Storage" and then it disappeared.

Did not get "Unknown" although I have gotten that before.

[thewolfe]

No "I" either.

[thewolfe]

Got an "unknown device" after It was pluged in and I restarted the machine.

[Paul Komski]

I used it originally a month or so ago on another machine but no luck on this one.
If it is still fine in another machine and only intermittenly fine on this one then consider that the cable or the USB port itself may be bad. Trying a different cable and different ports are worth a shot.

[Sylvander]

Surely "Unknown Device" means the device has been detected [and its description retrieved from its internal ROM?], but there are no settings in the hardware tree in the registry that match, no driver inf file on the PC that matches it, no driver already installed that matches it.

Install and run the FREE Unknown Device Identifier (http://www.zhangduo.com/unknowndeviceidentifier.html) to identify the unknown device and find a suitable driver [the prog helps with that].

[Paul Komski]

As mjc already quoted: XP shouldn't need specific drivers for USB storage devices...are the proper motherboard drivers installed

If one is getting an unknown device prompt after attaching a usb drive it almost certainly relates to the mobo chipset (firmware and drivers) and not to those of the device (the enclosure or card reader rather than the drives or cards inside them) attached to them - unless of course that firmware is damaged. That would seem unlikely if the enclosure is OK in another computer.

Correcting USB device recognition after adding a device that requires the underlying layer when that underlying layer has been malconfigured or never correctly installed in the first place is often very problematic.

BTW - Not all USB devices use the same underlying drivers, particularly those (such as usb kb and mouse) that use native HID drivers.
There was an "!" mark beside one of the USB notations.

I was able to "see" the 30 GB once and now that won't work after trying the other hd.
The fact that there is intermittency and that the ! was there on an occasion implies some hardware, possibly USB power, problem. If you get a yellow ! again look to see what its specific warning entails.

You could also try the enclosure (with no drive inside it) to see if Device Manger still balks at its recognition.

[Sylvander]

I imagine it would be illuminating to discover the identity of this mysterious "Unknown Device". :)

Then to figure out why Windows is failing to identify it.

Registry or file system corruption?

I'm amazed at how easy it is to corrupt my FAT32 file system. :(
e.g.
Whilst experimenting for this thread...
I switched on my USB HDD and got a blue screen [a fluke]...
Switched off the PC and used the EBCD to scan using "MS Scandisk" and found and fixed a corrupted file.
The file system had been scanned immediately before this and found clean, so switching off had obviously caused this.

[thewolfe]

Tried on another machine and get mass storage, then I try to update driver and I get "Unknon device".

I tried to download Unknown Device Identifier but the site is not available.

Can't change cable because thes cables are unique to this product.

Why not say that this Vantec product is a piece of junk.

I will try to "slave" it directly and see what she do.

[Sylvander]

"the site is not available"
I just downloaded the installation file from the site with no problem. :confused:

[Paul Komski]

Why not say that this Vantec product is a piece of junk.The product might be OK generally but your specific purchase looks increasingly that way. Two machines both with equivalent problems on something with the fixed cables that it has would make me RMA it or go grab another product.

[thewolfe]

Well, tried one last time this morning and the 30GB HD with the external USB hookup on another computer and it worked, so I tried the 200GB HD and it worked.

Then I tried the 200GB on the original computer and it worked.

The only thing that may have changed is the jumper itself since I have 4 or 5 in a box and I just pulled one out and "mastered" it.

Thanks for all of your input.

[Sylvander]

"The only thing that may have changed is the jumper itself since I have 4 or 5 in a box and I just pulled one out and "mastered" it."
So before you fitted a jumper to the "Master" position on each HDD, had there been NO jumper fitted to any? :(

[thewolfe]

No I had "mastered" it previously.

[Sylvander]

So possibly the previous jumper wasn't connecting the pins properly, huh?

[thewolfe]

I guess. I don't think I could have "jumpered" it incorrectly.

[mjc]

Same thing, really...if the jumper isn't making good contact with the pins it is the same as not being jumpered at all or being done incorrectly...only it isn't your fault ;).

[cros]

Tried upgrading the driver for the motherboard? I'm having a similar problem right now. When I upgraded the driver last, my external device would work fine. But I think the driver was reset, and now I keep getting a message that a high speed device is connected to a non high speed USB port.