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Cannot use old IBM hard drive as external hd?

post #1 of 10
3/9/06 at 10:47pm
Thread Starter 
Hi,

I've upgraded my 30gb R50 harddrive with a bigger hd and wanted to use the 30gb as an external USB hd. I put together the usb hd and plugged it in the computer. Windows sees a new hardware (USB mass storage device) and installs it. It says that it's successfully installed, but I can't see the drives (partitioned into 3 drives). Device manager also lists the usb mass storage device.

I open partition magic and it says that partition table is bad and refuses to load. When I don't have the usb hd plugged in, then partition magic loads, so it's not a problem with the my computer's hd.

The old hd has not been formatted as I wanted to keep the files and if I had missed copying any files to the new drive, I can always grab it from the old drive. When I put the 30gb back into the laptop, windows and everything loads perfectly and the hd works perfectly.

The external hd box also works because I've used it with the new hd before and there's no problems.

Does IBM have a 'special' partition table so other computers can't read it? And is there anyway for me to get the data out besides putting it back into the laptop? Thanks!
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post #2 of 10
3/11/06 at 4:16am
Nope, IBM doenst have a special partition table, with the exception of the restore partition. The OS partition is standard.

Just move your critical files off of the drive via a switch to another pc, or even USB key. That way you can glass the whole drive and have the backup.

Another way, is use Partition magic to create a new partition on the 30gb drive, load it up on your laptop, move critical files to that partion to transport them.
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post #3 of 10
3/12/06 at 11:22pm
Thread Starter 
Thanks for your help, but as I wrote above, I couldn't even load partition magic when the external hd is plugged into my desktop.

I've already backed up all (I hope) the data from the old hd to the new, but just in case I've missed a few critical files, then I want to be able to just plug in the external hd and get it, right now, I can't do that.
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post #4 of 10
3/13/06 at 11:49am
Do you not have access to an XP CD? Just pop it in the drive, load the setup, and wipe it out that way?

(install the drive in the laptop; after it's partitioned put it in the enclosure.


Also, you do know to initialize the disk in XP, I hope?
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post #5 of 10
3/13/06 at 1:08pm
Good job regressing. I assumed he knew about Initializing a disk or even assigning it if it is recognised.
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post #6 of 10
3/14/06 at 12:26am
Thread Starter 
wow, this is getting more and more complicated. Thanks for all your help guys. It's been a week since I've used the new drive and haven't found any files missing, so I'm just going to fdisk the whole drive and leave it at that.
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post #7 of 10
3/14/06 at 5:54am
fdisk? Your still using fat32? Wowsers, time for ntfs before we go to winfs later or early next year.
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post #8 of 10
3/14/06 at 11:46pm
Thread Starter 
It's not like I can use any other programs. Partition magic won't open, acronis can't 'see' the drive, neither can windows. I'm HOPING that fdisk can see the drive and at least then I can format it and then change it to ntfs in PM afterwards.


Device Manager can 'see' the physical drive


Partition Magic won't open with it plugged it


Windows Disk Management also can't 'see' the drive


.. and neither can Acronis

I can't see anything else I can do now besides hoping fdisk can at least make the disk usable again.
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post #9 of 10
4/13/06 at 10:24pm
Just a shot in the dark here, but I run a lot of laptop drives off external enclosures/adapters and some of them are more power hungry than others. If you have a USB enclosure that uses a Y cable (2 ends on the laptop, one on the enclosed HD), then make sure both USB connectors are plugged in. That second connector is to give auxilary power to run the drive properly.

I've seen a ton of read/write errors on perfectly good drives just because there wasn't enough power. Remember, the USB bus was not designed with running unpowered hard drives in mind.
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post #10 of 10
4/22/06 at 6:21am
^

That is a very good suggestion.

Also, make sure that all your connections are solid. I experienced the same thing and found that the connections inside the enclosure weren't solid.
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