External hardrive problems?

[alex1972]

I have just bought a Akasa 2.5" HDD Enclosure and fitted a 100GB Samsung 2.5" 5400rpm hard drive in it. All connections are secured and it works correctly. I have a sony vaio PCG-FR415B laptop computer and when i hook the external hard drive to the pc through a USB port it doesnt work. The port needs to be USB 2.0. There are 3 USB ports on the laptop, which one has USB 2.0 capabilities? is it the one at the back? i have checked that the external hardrive works on my friends pc and its fine. the driver on both laptop is the same, so why isnt it working on my laptop?

any advice will be appreciated,
thanks
alex

[MVP]

Is the drive spinning up when connected to the Vaio?

If it isn't, it sounds like your USB ports aren't serving up enough power for the drive. USB ports can serve 500mA, although some serve a lot less than that.

To quote one of the Akasa manuals (http://www.akasa.co.uk/pdf/installation_manual s/p2n_manualGB.pdf):

"The 2.5' enclosure can draw power from the USB bus, the cable carries both: data and power. In some cases the enclosure may require additional DC current for operation. The additional USB-to-DC power converter cable is provided."

However, since I don't know which Akasa model you have, I might be wrong. Perhaps you can share the enclosure's model number with us please?

[alex1972]

thanks for the reply MPV, the model i have is an Integral P2 AK-ENP2N black for 2.5" IDE notebook hard disks with hi-speed USB 2.0 interface. i have in the case a 100GB 2.5" Samsung Spinpoint M Series HM100JC

i have tried using the additional USB-DC converter cable but that didnt seem to work either.. without using the cable the blue LED light is still on. i'll check tonight if the drive is spinning when connected to the vaio.

any other thoughts, as to why it isnt working?

thaks MVP

alex

[alex1972]

MPV, i sorted this out last night...
it just needed the extra power supply

thanks for your answer..

alex