IDE HDD slave to laptop; need HDD enclosure?

well, I feel pretty sure my cable is defective. A guy at circuit said either the cable or hard drive may be sending too high a voltage throguh the usb, causing windows to report a malfunction. He thought it was thus the hard drive going bad, since there are other signs of that, though of course, can't eliminate the cable.

I opened up my older computer and connected the cable to it's hard drive. Same problem. I know that computer also had problems that I never looked into and can't remembe right now, so maybe the hard drive is bad too? fine.

I tried my cable on the CD-RW drive. Same issue. Shoot, do optical disk drives have a primary or secondary setting on them like maser slave on HDD? doubt it, but oh well, let's try one last thing.

Tried my Sony desktop's primary DVD-RW drve. Same issue.

It's ALWAYS the same issue. No matter what I connect, It's ALWAYS shown as "unknown device." and it ALWAYS happens no matter what USB port, no matter which laptop I connect to (one is vista, othe is XP Pro)

Want to know something else? The molex female connector seems to have a copper ring inside of each hole. Yeah well, one of the rings is missing in one of them.

Smell like a bad cable? I think so. I'm alreday looking at returning or exchanging it.

Going back a few, I noticed a question about Optical Devices and whether they had master/slave jumpers, or something like that.
I'm only assuming that you are referring to CD or DVD drives.

This is for desktops only, not laptops:
If you look at the back of any optical drive, just to the left of the IDE connector you will find a jumper block, usually with one jumper installed.
Normally, there are three sets of jumper pins.
From left to right they go: CS (Cable Select), Slave, Master.

If you use CS, the cable itself must have a split and twist in it to accomplish the device selection. With a CS cable, the drive connected to the end of the cable will become the master and the one connected to the center connector will be the slave.
Both drives must be jumpered Cable Select (CS).
With a straight thru cable, it's always important to jumper two drives, with one as Master and one as Slave. With just one, the drive will always be Master.

Drives in external enclosures of all types must be jumpered "Master".
That's usually somewhere in the install instructions.

Just FYI:
In the case of SATA drives, it's one drive=one port.... there are no Master/Slave jumpers. The only jumper on a SATA drive is usually the SATA1 - SATA2 jumper. Again, most SATA drives come from the factory with the little jumper installed, thus setting the drive to SATA1 (low speed) and to install to a SATA2 capable Mobo and get the HIGH speed of SATA2 that little jumper must be removed. A SATA2 drive installed on a SATA1 mobo, without its jumper, will NOT be seen by the mobo. That little fact has bit more than one person in the pants.

Y'all have a great day now, Y'hear?

The Doctor

thank, your post is much appreciated and you have been one of the most helpful to me so far.

however, i've been awaiting your reply and would have liked to see your thoughts on my present issues, since I must make decision soon regarding 1) is the able defectice and should I thus return it, and 2) is my hard drive realy dying and should I buy a one to replace it?

(still looking for my Sony diagnositc disks btw; if I don't find them i'll search their website)

May I suggest turning on "Spell Check"?

I have to read and then re-read your posts and try to translate them.

I've never seen a SATA data cable that was BAD. Loose maybe!

They are not crimped together like the old IDE cables were, which YES did go bad after being unplugged several times.

If in doubt about a hard drive and unable to test it yourself, take it to an expert. I'd never replace a hard drive till I was darn'd sure that it was bad.
Being an experienced computer tech, I have many ways to test a drive, not available to the average user.

good luck,
Doc

sorry about spelling. Usually I revise my posts well enough myself, but sometimes I'm rushed and don't.

This isn't a SATA cable that i suspect is bad; it's the IDE/SATA - USB cable that I tried to use to connect my IDE HDD to my laptop (the cable you have and posted about). On two laptops I get the same error about the device not being recognized, regardless of whether I connected an HDD, CD-ROM, or DVD-RW drive, so I can only guess it's the cable. Afterall, it's suspicious that one of the copper-looking contacts on the molex connector is missing.

I would like to be sure about the hard drive too, before replacing it. At least two people from circuit city (since the guy double checked with another person) say that my 0kb HDD space problem is a sign of damaged cylinders, and though I'm sure a smaller business would be cheaper, at least at circuit city it's $60 to do a diagnostic. I could almost buy a new hard drive with that money, so I feel pretty sure I should just go ahead and replace it.

so bottom line, I feel pretty sure I have to exchange or return the cable, and replace my hard drive. That's me thinking though, so I was checking here if you peoples of high knowledge have any objections to that, just to be sure I'm not missing something.

PS: I could not find my sony CDs, so I don't know how else to check my hard drive personally.

Quote:

On two laptops I get the same error about the device not being recognized, regardless of whether I connected an HDD, CD-ROM, or DVD-RW drive.

I know in an eternal enclosure you must set the drive to master. Have you checked your drives to be sure you have them jumpered correctly? slave and cable select settings may cause the drives to be unrecognizable.

yes, I believe I did say that already somewhere. They had all been set to master.