Ext vs internal storage disrepancy

[Fruss Tray Ted]

I have a Maxtor 160 gig drive if connected with a USB2 to IDE cable with external PSU and connected to a USB2 port, Windows claims that it needs to be formatted, but when I put it in as a slave drive on an IDE channel, I can view the files as normal.

It is formatted as NTFS. It was originally a slave drive but why can't Windows see it if it is already set up and formatted as NTFS when used as an external drive? I am hoping to be able to use it externally but was not ready for the hassle of needing to copy the files internally, then formatting externally, and then pasting the files back onto it afterwards. This would involve making several DVD's which I was hoping to avoid.

I've read some MS links about taking 'ownership' but that does not seem to apply here.

Does anyone know how to circumvent this?

[Paul Komski]

What exact sort of converter cable is it and how is the drive jumpered. It was a slave but should now be a master would be one guess. It is also possible that the converter cable has firmware that doesnt support drives larger than 127 gig.

A modern enclosure (thus with 48bit LBA support) and holding an IDE drive jumpered as master would be another approach.

Which version of windows are you using?

You might also want to see if you can access the drive using Knoppix.

[Fruss Tray Ted]

The converter cable and PSU are older than the hills, perhaps that is where the issue is. The HDD spins up. I've tried Master and Cable Select for jumper settings.

It appears to be Windows is not seeing something already done (supposedly) to their liking...


I'll try a small drive and format it to see if there are any other issues shortly.

It detected 'New Hardware', successfully installed drivers, then failed to use... Itt sees it, but only as 'Raw'.

[Paul Komski]

Presumably XP's Disk Management is what is doing the seeing?

If there's data you want on this smaller drive then obviously back-off or try TestDisk to see if it can rebuild the partition tables. Otherwise you could wipe it completely (optional) or just simply try to partition and format from Disk Management?