Problems with USB HD

[tom07]

I have an external USB drive which consists of a WD 200GB EIDE drive in an Ahanix D-Vine external case. Windows can see the drive in the Disk Manager but when I tried to
partition and format it there, after a few minutes I got
the following error (at this point the partitioning was done):

The operation did not complete because the
partition/volume is not enabled. Please reboot
the computer to enable the partition/volume.

I have tried numerous other approaches and by removing the
drive, installing it internally in the system, and
partitioning and formatting using WD utilities I got it all
set up fine. If I leave it installed internally it works
properly and is usable, and the full 200GB is accessible.

However if I remove it and put it into the USB case then as
soon as I attempt to assign it a drive letter using Disk
Manager, I get the error shown above. Needless to say,
rebooting as suggested does not fix the problem.

I have both built-in USB 1.1 ports and an add-on PCI card
with USB 2.0 ports. The same error occurs regardless of
where the drive is connected.

I am only using this drive as additional storage, I don't
need to boot from it or anything like that. It is
formatted as a single 200 GB NTFS primary partition, though
I find that changing the partitioning seems to have no
effect -- no matter how I set it up, I get the error shown
above.

I can't find any information on this error in the
knowledgebase.

Any suggestions?

Thanks!

Tom

 

[bcastner]

Remount the drive as a slave on your desktop and use the Western Digital utilities to do a low-level format. Then create the partitions and format the drive. Place it back in the USB enclosure but do not connect it to the computer yet.

I have only seen this issue with WD.

Last step is to use Device Manager and remove the Root Hubs from the USB section. Reboot and let Win2k rediscover them. Reboot and add the drive back as USB external.

 

[tom07]

Thanks for the tips. That's pretty much what I had done (I had already tried deleting the root hubs, though I didn't mention it in my first message). I had not done the low-level format (how long would that take on 200 GB??), but I had run the WD diagnostic quick-test which took about half an hour and showed everything was fine.

In the interim I got some tips from usbman.com which worked -- I disabled Plug and Play in the BIOS and reinstalled Windows 2000 as an upgrade in "Standard PC" rather than "ACPI" mode. I then reinstalled SP4. Windows now sees the drive fine. Whether it was the reinstall alone that did it, or the switch from ACPI to Standard PC, I'll never know!