[SOLVED] 3.5 HDD Hard drive enclosure

[touvaj10]

I just purchased an amazon basic 3.5 hdd enclosure for my 3 tb Toshiba 3.5 hdd. It seems to not be detected by my system or third party programs as well. I'm suspecting that it may be due to the power going into the hard drive. When i have it connected to my laptop and and the wall outlet the hard drive powers on. It makes a certain sound as well. The sound is essentially the hard drive starting up and powering up, then it halts then weakens and then reapeats over and over. During this as well there is a distinct double clicking noise. My laptop does recognize that its an amazon basics hard drive enclosure, but there is no partition or anything showing up for the actual Toshiba hard drive.

 

[Paperdoc]

That enclosure came with a small "wall wart" power supply module. You MUST use that to provide power to the unit. No USB3 port on your laptop can provide enough power for it. Your post indicates, though, that you do have that connected. I note also it has a power switch button on the back - I presume that is turned on.

 

[touvaj10]

Yea everything is plugged in, ac wall wart and the usb 3.0 that connects from laptop to the enclosure. The strange thing is that the enclosure only powers on if everything is plugged in. If only the ac adapter is plugged in then it still wont turn on until its connected to the laptop. When i remove the usb 3.0 wire it still stays on but the repetitious sound still occurs. When the adapter is removed the power dies so I'm not sure if this is a drive issue or enclosure device issue. I will try to get one of my families old pc up and running and see if i can connect the hard drive through there.

 

[Paperdoc]

So you're using it correctly. If you simply disconnect the enclosure's power supply unit, does the performance change? Or, the same? What I'm thinking is that either the enclosure's power circuits or the "wall wart" unit may be defective and failing to provide the power needed.

BUT before gong much further, check this. I see that you can detect the enclosure somehow on your laptop, but not all is well. Any brand new and empty HDD requires preparation for an OS to use it. The process is a two-step thing called Partitioning and Formatting, but modern versions of Windows combine this into a simple single step called Create a New Simple Volume. Until that is done, Windows' common tools like Explorer can NOT "see" the HDD and will not show it.

The way to do this preparation work in Windows is to use its Disk Management utility to find the new storage device, then RIGHT-click on it to Create a New Simple Volume. If you have not done this already, look in Disk Management for the drive in the enclosure. IF it shows there but does not have a Partition and Drive with a letter name assigned, then that is why Windows can't recognize it in Explorer. Do the Create.... thing, then back out of Disk Management and reboot to be sure Windows knows how to use the drive.

There's also another thing to check. In your laptop, have you installed the Device Driver for this particular USB3 device (the enclosure). It should have come with the enclosure on a disk, or you should have a reference to a website for downloading it. Check in your laptop's Device Manager to verify there IS a driver installed for it. Without a driver the laptop may not know how to communicate with it properly. If there is no device driver at all, then you may need to install that before doing the Create .... thing.

 

[touvaj10]

Thanks for the response.

When i remove the power source the enclosure powers off. I have already used the windows built in disk management, and it is not showing up for me to create a new volume. In terms of the device driver it seems to not be installing properly on my laptop or the two home PCs I have tried. One thing of notice is that the drive doesn't seem to be installing correct on neither my laptop or my two home PCs. On my laptop it says to use troubleshooting which doesn't seem to be fixing the issue and on my PC it just fails to install the drive. On my device/printers page it does show the Amazon hard drive enclosure, but on it, it shows a caution symbol in which I have troubleshooted and restarted the laptop but the issue persists. Checking online I cant seem to find anything regarding a drive or update. On the store page it says "no drivers needed" just plug and play.

 

[touvaj10]

I've decided to just return the enclosure, regardless thank you for the help.

 

[Paperdoc]

You're welcome. Your idea is perfectly valid. Even if the enclosure you got was defective, you could get another from some other source and try again, because it should work this way. If you do this, I notice that the Amazon Basic unit had a USB3 interface, which is MUCH faster than the older USB2 system IF your host computer system also has a USB3 port to connect to. So if you have that, be sure to get a USB3-capable new enclosure.

 

[Paperdoc]

Thanks for Best Answer.