R driver 3 need advice

[andy g]

R driver 3, just got one of these, might come in hand
it is a cable that will let you connect h/d to your pc via usb and also dvd/cd roms, so no need for caddy/enclosure my question is as iv only just got it the only thing i could test it on is a dvd/cd rom it worked fine the dvd rom showed up in 'my computer' now a mate of mine has got a laptop but the o/s wont load and he was wondering if it was his h/d or something else so i took the r driver 3 over to connect his laptop h/d to his desktop to see if it worked the problem is it didn't show up in 'my computer' his pc showed it 'found new hardware' and the 'safely remove hardware' listed it and also it was listed in 'device manager' under 'disk drives' i even went to 'add new hardware' but it was listed there as working properly but i cant find it in 'my computer' so that we could explore it, now i am not 100% certain but i think any device connected to this cable must be set to 'master' i don't know if this applies to h/d i did look at what looked like pins on the h/d but there was no jumper or anything to tell you which set was for master, i did connect the h/d and powered it up using the lead that came with this cable before plugging it in to the desktop i was thinking maybe the laptop h/d was the fault (as it didn't load the o/s when it was in the laptop) but surely if it was faulty the desktop pc would not have recognised it, any ideas, thanks all. oh i haven't tried any other h/d yet thought i would ask on here first.

 

[ssddx]

before you make assumptions you might want to test the cable out by connecting a known working drive via the cable to a working computer to see if everything is peachy. Some external systems require a power cord or dual usb slots to power external hdds. once you have verified this, the following is my take on the situation:

in this situation the master drive would be the desktop's drive with the os install on it. any drives you attach would be slaves (including the laptop drive with an os) since they are not part of the host computer.

dead drives can still appear in some hardware listings, but not in my computer. the status for the drive shouldn't be "working properly" if this is the case though. since you said it appears in the safely remove hardware tab, this would seem to point more towards the computer not recognizing it as a hard drive for some reason.

Perhaps you might want to connect the hard drive directly to your sata (or whatever plug) cables inside the desktop. the usb interface might be the problem. do you still get the same information? (make sure your computer is off first!)

 

[andy g]

I was just told i could give this laptop h/d a drive letter (when its connected to a deskyop pc) by right clicking it in 'device manager' will this work

 

[ssddx]

if there isn't anything wrong with the drive, or cable interface - yes.

usually that is the first thing you want to try.

 

[andy g]

sorry i mean 'disk management'

i dont understand why i have to do this as it was not menioned in the instructions it just said hook up the external hd with the lead (R driver 3) and connect it to a desktop using the usb on the lead, basically the r driver 3 is an enclosure/caddy without the caddy if you know what i mean, just the lead, i have had an hd before and put it in an enclosure/caddy and just plugged it in a pc, no changing the drive letter, it just appears in the 'my compuer' folder.

 

[ssddx]

windows supports the plug and play feature for hard drives so you shouldn't have to do anymore more. however, in case it doesnt recognize the drive trying to assign it a drive letter manually is the next step.

since you are having trouble i was just giving you a checklist of easy things to check to try and figure out where the problem lies.

 

[andy g]

Yes i understand, and thankyou for your time and advice i will have to try another hd and see what happens problem is i havn't got one so ill look for a cheap one on the net to test it out, thanks again.