Can't get HDD out of external to work

C

cmay119

Limp Gawd
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Nov 30, 2009
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I have a maxtor 80gb drive that was initially an external drive, probably from the one touch series but I'm not certain. I lost the power cable to the enclosure so I decided to pull the drive from the enclosure and just plug it in as an internal IDE drive.

I've now tried on 2 separate computers, but whenever the drive is plugged in, neither computer will boot, the CPU fan won't spin up or anything. Unplug the drive and they'll boot up like everything is normal.

Looking at the drive I see one pin has been perma-jumpered from the factory in the area where you put the jumper for Slave or Master. I'm wondering if this is what's causing the issue trying to run the drive as an internal drive?

If I bought an IDE to SATA adapter cable, would that bypass the jumper assignment that IDE recognizes?

It's possible that the drive is just dead, as well, but I'm not really convinced of that, as the drive was working fine up until the day I lost the power cable for the enclosure. The drive has been just sitting on my desk ever since, unused.

There isn't any super important data on the drive, so if I'm SOL, than so be it.

Thanks for any help, all. :)
 
What is the model number of the 80GB maxtor? If it is out of one of the old blue or grey onetouch's, I vaguely remember that they were jumpered to cable select instead of master or slave which could cause problems with some PATA controllers.
 
The actual drive is a DiamondMax Plus 9. The enclosure says Maxter One Touch 80GB and it indeed is a grey/aluminum enclosure.

The drive was jumpered to 'Cap Limit' which I don't exactly know what that is. The other jumper options are Master and Cable-Select. Removing the jumper entirely is Slave mode. I've tried them all, but neither computer was having it.

The permanent jumper is only on 1 pin.
 
Does your jumper layout have 10 pins (1 missing) laid out like this?

o o o o o
o o o o o

If so, jumper it like this and see if it makes a difference

o X X o o
o o o o o

Put the jumper over the pins with the X's and see if that helps.
 
mwroobel said:
Does your jumper layout have 10 pins (1 missing) laid out like this?

o o o o o
o o o o o

If so, jumper it like this and see if it makes a difference

o X X o o
o o o o o

Put the jumper over the pins with the X's and see if that helps.
Click to expand...


Sorry, I missed your response before putting up the photos. Alright, I'll give that a try, would that be the top pins (label side) of cable-select and cap limit?

Thanks for your help, btw. :)
 
cmay119 said:
Sorry, I missed your response before putting up the photos. Alright, I'll give that a try, would that be the top pins (label side) of cable-select and cap limit?

Thanks for your help, btw. :)
Click to expand...

Yeah, I screwed up my color tags, forgot editing is black on white and the actual page is white on black

o o o o o
o o o o o

Red is the missing pin
Jumper it like this and see if it makes a difference

o X X o o
o o o o o

If that doesn't work, try

X o o o o
X o o o o

If it still doesn't work, it could be a bad PATA controller on your board, or the drive just could have released the magic smoke.
 
Yep, I've now tried all those combinations, including the horizontal jumper of CS & Cap limit - still no dice.

Really odd, that the computers won't boot up with the drive plugged in. I have no way of knowing if the drive is truly dead.

I'm still wondering if I can bypass the jumpers with a PATA to SATA converter cable, as SATA drives don't use jumpers.

EDIT: Or perhaps an item like this: http://www.microcenter.com/product/285941/EZ-Connect_USB_to_SATA-IDE_Adapter
 
If it were just one computer that exhibited this behavior, I might think it was just a finicky PATA controller, but 2 computers not even spinning up the CPU fan with the drive connected sounds like a power problem with the drive itself. If you leave the ATA cable connected but don't plug the molex power in, does the computer boot up and just not see the drive?
Most of the Onetouch drives used 12V/3A power adapters. Might you have one in your collection somewhere you could use to test the external drive? Some Netgear routers use the same plug/power.
 
IIRC the Cap Limit jumper was for compatibility with old BIOS and OS releases which couldn't handle drives over a certain size (no of cylinders/heads etc) - it shouldn't be needed on anything but very old PCs now. (no idea why it would be on in a USB enclosure - perhaps the USB board in the enclosure did some smoke and mirrors).

If you fit the drive as a single drive to the ATA channel, you should connect it to the last connector on the IDE cable, and set either the Master OR the Cable Select jumper (try each in turn).

Also, try a different IDE/ATA cable too! (are you using an 80pin cable or an older 40pin).


Other than that, there's probably not much else you can do - the drive itself could well be duff!
No offence, but if it has no data on that you need, I'd probably just bin it - not worth spending any more cash or time to try and get it working TBH!
 
If the machine is flat out not powering on with the drive connected then there is probably a short to ground somewhere internal and the PSU's protection circuitry is at play.

I'd say the drive is probably dead... but you can get a 12v 3A (or higher will work) adapter off Ebay for all of like $6 or $7 shipped... put it back in the enclosure and see if it will work.
 
Thanks for the tips all! I'll give these ideas a shot and see if I can access the drive. Otherwise its not a huge deal. :)
 
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