Problem with Internal Hard Drive/Enclosure

Recently I decided that I needed a bit more space for my laptop, that could also be used at home and pretty much wherever I wanted, so purchased an internal hard drive and an external enclosure. The hard drive that I purchased can be located at this address: http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N82E16822148139 I received the enclosure and the hard drive in the mail today, and eagerly went to work on the simple setup of an external hard drive. I connected all the necessary components inside within a few seconds, and was ready to use my brand new hard drive. Then, I connected the USB cable from the enclosure to my laptop and nothing happened. The LED light flashed green and red (which wasn’t explained in the instructions), but is now a solid red, which supposedly means the disk is being accessed.

I went to the Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Computer Management > Storage > Disk Management, and my external hard drive did not show up. I have tried plugging the USB into other computers and it did not work there either, so I know the problem isn’t with my computer. I called up Seagate and they told me that the power supply didn’t have enough of a maximum output to power the hard drive (they said it needed 12v – 3v; mine is 12v – 1.5v), but when I called up the store that sold me the enclosure, they told me that the voltage was fine.

I’m going to plug the hard drive into a desktop or something to see if the problem is with the enclosure or with the hard drive itself. Either way, I’m heading down to the store tomorrow with my hard drive and enclosure, to see if they can do anything about it. I’ve tried changing the jumper on the hard drive to all the different settings and none of them seemed to work. I have ran the Discwizard from the Seagate website, which kept telling me to set the settings to "Primary Slave" (which I did), but that didn't do anything either. I’m not really sure what to do at this point, so if anyone has any idea as to what the problem is and how to correct it, please post your solution!

 

Have you created a partition on the hard drive? If not that's why Windows won't show it up. Also, make sure it's being displayed on the Hardware Manager. I had a similar problem with an external hard drive + enclosure.

 

Ok. The voltage works... what amperage does it require? If your amperage is too low, then it won't work at all. Gotta check BOTH voltage and amperage. Your voltage range is fine, though. Windows should show up as an "USB Storage Device" if it connects correctly, no matter if the drive is formatted, partitioned, whatever. You should consider setting the drive to "Cable Select", or perhaps "Master", not just "Slave". I ran into that with a drive for a friend, it had to be set to Cable Select, otherwise it just wouldn't work.

 

I can't create a partition on the hard drive because Windows isn't recognizing it at all. I currently have the setting on Cable Select; I've tried every single setting on the hard drive, and haven't had luck with any of them. In terms of the output on the power brick, it says - "Output: 12V -- 1.5A" and then below that "5V -- 1.5A."

If the voltage and amperage was too low, then would the hard drive spin at all to begin with? In this instance, the hard drive heats up and displays a red or flashing red/green light, but isn't recognized by Windows.

 

It could spin up. What does the enclosure require? It should have specs for power as well. Your adapter can supply up to 12V*1.5A = 18W, so it should in theory be enough. Next check is to try plugging the drive into a desktop computer sans the enclosure to make sure the drive is OK. Make sure you plug it in solidly, a bad connection can cause things like that, too.

 

Ok, I'm going to try plugging the hard drive into a desktop computer to see if the hard drive is at fault.

 

Which enclosure did you buy? Can you provide a link?