[SOLVED] terascale, 2nd had hdd, the order of turning the power on.

[Nikon1234]

Hi.

I just bought three used seagate terascale HDD 4000 GB from ebay. I paid total 90$+8.56$(shipping)+tax. These are pretty good deals. When the disks arrived, I tried on my notebook (Lenovo T410) right away. I connected them one at a time, two of the three drive act normally. I connected them through one of the 4 usb through an external docking station. For these two drives, I may do the following:

connect the drive, then turn on the power.
turn on the power, then connect the drive.

All pop up well.




for the third drive, I can only access the drive by
turn on the power, then connect the drive to the usb.

If I connect it to the usb first, then turn on the power of the external docking station, the drive will not show up in the folder, it will not show up in Disk Management either.

what I am missing here?

Thanks.

 

[Lutfij]

Considering that it's a SATA 3.5" HDD, have you seen if the drive that's behaving odd with your dock is behaving the same on a desktop platform? Mind you, you can't connect an HDD to a live system. You will need to power down and disconnect from the wall then connect the HDD to the donor system's SATA port, then fire up the system and see if the drive is visible in BIOS, then in OS.

 

[Nikon1234]

Hi, Lutfij: Thanks for the quick jump in.

I have three terascale, seagate 4TB drive. I connect them through an external docking station. I do the test drive, one at a time.

The computer is powered up.

drive_1
put into the external docking station, connect the cable of the docking station into the notebook USB, then turn on the power of the docking station. The drive show up in both folder structure and [Disk Management].
put into the external docking station, turn on the power of the docking station then connect the cable of the docking station into the notebook USB. The drive show up in both folder structure and [Disk Management].

drive_2, same as drive_1
put into the external docking station, connect the cable of the docking station into the notebook USB, then turn on the power of the docking station. The drive show up in both folder structure and [Disk Management].
put into the external docking station, turn on the power of the docking station then connect the cable of the docking station into the notebook USB. The drive show up in both folder structure and [Disk Management].

drive_3
put into the external docking station, connect the cable of the docking station into the notebook USB, then turn on the power of the docking station. The drive DOES NOT show up in both folder structure and [Disk Management].
put into the external docking station, turn on the power of the docking station then connect the cable of the docking station into the notebook USB. The drive DOES show up in both folder structure and [Disk Management].

so, again, what is my problem with drive_3?

Thanks.

 

[Nikon1234]

Just to report if anyone is interested in my question. It turns out that the external HDD docking station, SYBA is causing the problems. I have had this SYBA for ~6 years, I have used it with my 'main' laptop, Lenovo T410 and it performs well. Recently I started using my daughter's unwanted computer, a newer Lenovo B40-80. Maybe the SYBA docking station is too old and work or not work sporadically with the computer and my newly bought Seagate Terascale 4000GB HDD (2nd hand, refurbished). At first I thought it was the problem with the computer's USB, either hardware or software. I have fumbled a lot of time with the computer, even re-installed Windows twice to find the problems. At last I found out the culprit is the 'old' docking station. I switched another 5 year old docking station, WAVLINK, everything is fine now.

Summery, it was the docking station to cause my 4TB HDD problem.

thanks.