burritobyte said:I am hoping that you can help me. I have 4 or 5 hard drives from over the years and now have no functioning desktop to get all of the data off. The drives are various sizes (40GB - 400GB) and both PATA and SATA. Most of the drives have multiple partitions, which I believe is the biggest difficulty here. I want to get an enclosure to connect each of these drives to my laptop and pull the data off.

I have read that most, if not all, external enclosures do not support partitions. I have been looking around to see if there are any that do support partitioned drives and I've come up empty-handed. Is there an enclosure that connects to a USB2 port, can handle both SATA and PATA drives, up to 400GB in size, with partitions? Most of the drives are NTFS, but I believe 1 or 2 may be FAT32. The laptop I am going to use for the transfer is XP Pro / NTFS.

Thank you for your help and advice...

Ive never heard of a enclosure not supporting multiple partitions, thats odd. I even have a $15 enclosure, and partitions work fine.

If getting the data off is all you need, an enclosure is overkill. You can simply buy a USB to SATA or IDE cable. I dont have a link off hand, but I will post one later.

EDIT:

Here is one of the cables I am talking about. This one is nice because it does both IDE and SATA.
http://www.Newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16812232002

Thank you both for your help.

I just picked up a apricorn EZ-bus-dts-ekit. It is 24.99AR + 7.14 shipp at Newegg

I also have an ez-bus-dt enclosure from a few years ago. The new DTS fan moves less air than the old dt. I heard that was the case but it is true. On the other hand it still has not got hot. Granted this is winter ~65 in the house but this was after formatting a 750gb drive and copying over 100gb.

the first enclosure had a bad usb port and would over load my computer's USB port, even if the enclosure was not plugged in. On the good side Newegg's CS took care of this with no problem and replacement works well.

They have a JMicron JM20336 chipset in it. this is the one: http://www.jmicron.com/Product_JM20336.htm

One complaint is the cord from the brick to the enclosure is shorter. I used to put the brick on the floor and now it has to set on the desk.

I pretty much read through the thread and tried all methods I saw in posts. But I still could not get my computer to recognize the 2.5 HD in my enclosure, i.e. It is not showing under "My Computer", neither under "Disk Management" (but it is already formated). It does show up under "Computer Management"->"Device Manage"->"Universal Serial Bus Controllers" as "USB Mass Storage Device". But I simply can not access it since it is not under "My Computer". I am seeking help.

I already tried four different 2.5 enclosures, two different 2.5 working hard-drive (both are formatted and I can still plug them in my laptop as primary drive and they work) on three different computers (XP and Vista).... I tried every possible combination of cable settings (it is currently master/single). I also tried to use separate AC power (thinking the USB power is not enough), special Y cable, uninstall then reinstall driver from Windows... NO luck! The computer made a sound indicating something was plugged in. And I can hear the HD is spinning. But the HD never showed up under "My Computer". However, when I plug in the Maxtor OneTouch III Mini Edition (retailed version of 100GB 2.5 HD), it was recognized perfectly. ... I thought it was the enclosure problems. But after trying 4 different enclosures (all different brands from different stores), I have no clue where the problem is now. It is driving me crazy.

I want to upgrade my laptop with a better HD. But how can I copy/clone my current laptop hard-drive to the new one if I can not get any external USB 2.5 enclosure to work? Any advice. Thanks a lot!

The thread looks like it's still here. Nice.

Do you remember the CompUSA External 2.5" hard drive enclosure with
an 8 in 1 memory reader? I think we got them for $8 each.

I've just put mine into service but don't have the software disk.

At the time I got it I went to CompUSA and they had the software
in their download area. Searching google for the SKu and CompUSA
was enough to find their download directory.

Now they don't have it on their site.

The sku is 333107

If anyone has the software and would put it up or let me grab it via
torrent or other method I would appreciate it.

WinXP did not recognize the external drive. I Thought it would
but it seems to need the driver.

I understand it mgiht be a via chipset.

The memory section of the box complicates things a bit. The memory reader
becomes a drive as does the physical drive in the box.

I remember running it under Win98SE and there were two drives showing.

Odd that one of them, the memory reader would not show up. Maybe it did
and I didn't notice. When one didn't work I went off to look for the software
and got lost.

Anyone out there know where to dl the software?

Thanks in Advance

Thank you very much . Both for a reply AND for a thorough reply.

I did check the master slave config. It's a Seagate drive and needs no
jumpers to be master. I beleive MAster is proper setting.

The manual is missing and since CompUSA is out of businss they're not
available anymore.. Although I just remembered the wayback machine..

I wonder.. if it's there.

The drive was used sucessfully on Win98SE at one time. This is why I think
it will work ok in XP. And the memory reader would show as a separate drive
so there are 2 parts to the unit. Maybe the memory reader is slave to the
master of the hard drive. But since it's USB they could be totaly separate too.

In any case it did work once and never failed. If I can find my 2nd one whcih
is new I'll be trying it next.

I did put in another drive of only 4 gb. I would think that like any drive it
would show up saying needing formatting but XP is saying it totally doesn't
recognize the entire unit. And the memory portion should be recognized.
Maybe I'm reading too much into this however.

I'm familiar with Fdisk , format and such since Dos 3.3. Well If I get if figured
out I'll post the results.

I guess what I want is this:

1. Since XP knows there's something there that's a USB device but says it
can't recognize it I wondered if there's a routine to run that might look at it
at a lower level whereI can get some ID codes or something useful.

Really I should just throw it out and curse CompUSA and buy another one from
Deal Extreme for $10.

Any ideas will be useful however. I will look into some more. Thank you
Andre

PS my next step will be to put the 2.5" drive in an adapter on a 2nd IDE cable and
stick it in the computer. If it works then I'll punt.

PS: Device manager sees something there, a usb device but it
can not IDentify it. It says that MS drivers from 1997 OR 1991 are
installed but that the device is not working properly.

I have attempted to let Windows find drivers but it can't. Then
I've dl drivers from the company taht I think made the device,
Someone called Calvarly LTD. Their cases look identical. But
as you say, they say XP doesn't need drivers.

So I'm stuck.

Look back at my main points. Something will turn up.

Does anyone have any experience with this 5.25" USB 2.0/FireWire External IDE Drive Enclosure at Meritline? There are no details on brand or chipset. Thanks.

Hello!

Are there any hdd enclosures with ZIP emulation?