Macally External Enclosure- Wont Recognize!

Hey guys, just bought a Macally PHR-100AC external enclosure off newegg. I chose it cause it had 5 egg rating out of about 80 people. It is both Firewire and USB 2.0.

Heres my problem. I am using a WD Caviar SE 160 GB hard drive. which is well within its specs of capasity. I am only using USB because my laptop only has a mini 1394 and the cable that came with the enclosure was the big one. Laptop is Dell E1505.

I first power on enclosure. Get light. then plug into computer. the first time it immediately said installing new hardware for disk drive device, then finished. So i goto my computer, but nothign is there. Under device manager however, it does recognize the drive. So i go to Computer management- My Computer > Manage > Disk Management > And there is the drive also listed under my laptops primary hard-drive. Except it has not been assigned a drive letter, does not show any partitions, or any size of the hard drive. All there is a little box that says "Disk 1", "Dynamic", and "Foreign " and has a yellow triangle with exclemation point in it.
When i right click on that box my only options are "Import Foreign Disks", "Convert to Basic Disk" and Properties- which brings me to the same thing device manager shows.

Now this was a secondary hard drive in my desktop- set to slave- and has a ton of crap backed up on it. When i installed it into the enclosure i made sure it was set to single/master ... which is NO jumper at all. I even did try it once on slave.

So i decided to take the primary hard drive out of my desktop and give that one a whirl. it is a WD 80 GB. When i plugged that one in It immediately opened a folder with all the files and folders including windows OS on it.

Unfortunately i cannot test the 160GB harddrive in the desktop- cause i fried the motherboard on it a while ago. thats my main reason for getting the enclosure- so that i could at least salvage my stuff.
...AND oh crap i just had a revelation... could i have fried my 160GB harddrive along with the motherboard!?

Any help or suggestions would be GREATLY appreciated

 

Do you know anyone else that you could hook it up to? It is a possibility that the motherboard took out the hard drive controller when it went.
If you're lucky and know someone who has the exact same drive as you, it's sometimes possible to swap the controllers.

 

Try changing the jumper on the HD to "Cable Select". What Windows found originally was the USB enclousure.

Also make sure that you have attached the ribbon cable securely this could also cause a problem.

 

Go back into Computer Management. You need to format the drive before you can use it - you can then apply a name to it.

Right-click the new drive in there and hit "Format". Considering that the drive has 160GB of space, it will take some time to format (probably around an hour or so, I don't have an exact number).

 

Teranfirbt: The hard drive controller...? Is that a part on the hard drive or on the motherboard? and if it is on the harddrive, how do i switch it. There is no visiable damage on the hard drive or even in the power socket, so i really think the hard drive is in good shape, but i guess i wont really know for sure until i plug it into someone else desktop- or get it working in this enclosure.

irishrover: This sounds like it could make sense that it onyl detected the enclosure, but the ribbion is in snug- tripple checked... and do you happen to know "Cable Select" jumper position for a WD harddrive- cause im not seeing it on the diagram printed on the HD.

Chaz: There is no option to reformat a drive when i right click on it. and if there was, ... the drive has already been formatted and i have a bunch of stuff on it now.

Does anyone happen to know what "Import Foreign Disks" does? I am afraid of trying any of the option it Does give me cause i dont want to loose any info. When i attempted the "Convert to Basic Disk" option it said it would loose all data, so i canceled.

Thanks guys!

 

Anyone out there have any ideas?

I called Macally tech support - and just so that everyone knows, they are COMPLETELY USELESS. i knew more than the guy i was talking to- and i obviously dont know crap about this

 

Look for something that says "CS" either on the top or bottom of the drive. The "CS" stands for Cable Select.

As far as the Import Foreign Disks; This is usally reserved for servers. When an unkown disk is inserted into a RAID configuration on a server this message appears. Where did the disk you have come from? I'm really at a loss as to why would be getting this message in the first place!

 

I set the jumper to CS and it didnt do anyhting different. This is really getting on my nerves.

I know that the device is recognizing the hard drive itself- because in device mamager it lists it as WDC WD 16 00JB-00GVA0 USB Device- so this would knock out the theory that the HD might not be compatible with the enclosure, correct?

There are just no volumes on the disk.... which i know for a fact there are- Ive got a ton of backed up files on there. The HD came out of my desktop computer, it was just a secondary HD that was set to slave. never had any problems with it, except for when i first installed it in desktop and i had to do some stuff through disk manager to get it to recognize, but that was years ago.

If i were to try the Import Foreign Disks options, that not a function that actually erases data or anyhting is it?

 

OMG guys! Ubelieveable!
Well... turns out all i had to do was right click on the box for the drive in device manager > select Import Foreign Disks > Then press OK!

I cant bellieve it was so simple- i guess this thread will now be a great reference for future users

Found this site- tells you what to do for all the different status conditions of a HD http://www.microsoft.com/resources/.../proddocs/en-us/sag_disktrouble.mspx?mfr=true

Thanks for all your help everyone!