[Novalug] Hardware question: question about usb hd format

[Maxwell Spangler]

On Thu, 1 Nov 2007, Bonnie Dalzell wrote:

> I have a 160 gig ide harddrive which i had in a usb case.

... Bonnie has a hard drive in a computer that can be accessed fine by a 
computer when the the hard drive is in a USB case, but when she tries to hook 
the drive up directly to the computer (no USB case involved), the computer can 
see the drive exists but doesn't seem to recognize partitions on it.

When you connect the hard drive in a USB case to a computer, the USB case's 
circuitry is handling the drive's geometry and presenting it to you as a 
general purpose storage device.

When you connect that drive directly to the computer, you may need to 
experiment with BIOS settings in order to get the computer to see (and use) 
the hard drive exactly as the USB case is using it.  If the case is using it 
one way and the computer is trying to use it with another set of geometries, 
it may only see a garbled partition table and report none exists.

I'm hoping someone else can explain the technical details of c/h/s issues as I 
am waaay too tired to try tonight.  But that's all I can think of tonight.

Oh: Try the drive alone on another PC and see if you get the same results. 
Perhaps the case is doing something weird inside there and not the PC.. ?


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Maxwell Spangler
Chapel Hill, North Carolina