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Firewire HDD Enclosure Problems

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BHAX

Vendor
Sep 5, 2003
41
US
Greetings Gurus!

Hope you can help me with this one.

I have purchased two Bytecc ME-340 USB/Firewire enclosures (off EBAY, cheap) and in one I have installed a Pioneer DVR-108, the other has a Maxtor 300gb ATA hard drive.

Problem:

I have now had these installed for a couple weeks and to date the Maxtor has wiped itself out on three seperate occasions saying "Volume is corrupted" and I can not access the drive until reformatting thus losing all my data. There doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to the failures. I had thought it would happen when I burned a DVD to the DVR-108 but that hasn't turned out to be so.

The DVR-108 has worked flawlessly in the enclosure, my only problem has been with this HDD. I am at my wits end and I am entertaing solutions. Any recommendations on firewire enclosures that support 300+ gb HDDs would be appreciated.

Here is what I have tried so far:

1. These enclosures use the Prolific 3507 chipset. I have flashed to the latest firmware I could find.

2. I have swapped around the DVDR and HDD in their daisychain.

3. Tried the HDD with cable select and master jumpers. Failures on both.

4. Right now I am trying the HDD on a USB 2.0 port, however I prefer the performance of the firewire.

Sorry for the length of this post, I want to be as thorough as possible.

I think I may be in the market for a replacement enclosure but I want to make sure I am not missing anything. I am using these devices with a 25' 6-pin to 4-pin, this shouldn't be a problem with the research I have done but who knows.

Environment:
Dell Inspiron 9100 (Notebook)
Windows XP SP2
2-Bytecc ME-340 USB/Firewire Enclosure (Pioneer DVD+-RW & Maxtor 300gb HDD)
25 ft 6pin to 4pin Firewire Cable

I assume either the enclosure or the 25' cable are my weakest link. However the DVD Burner works like a champ so I think the cable is fine.

Any feedback appreciated... Also what enclosures have you had good experiences with. Specifically with 300gb+ HDDs.

Thanks in advance for any replies!

BHAX
 
Have you tried switching the drives to the other box? There is an update for Firewire under SP2. Mainly for speed problems, but who knows? Try a shorter cable for testing, hard drives are more particular than DVD's.
 
You could try partitioning the 300 into 3?
Martin

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