External HDD + USB drive issues

[Jlo555]

All right, so I bought a hard drive kit which said worked with windows 98SE through XP. I put the thing together with a 120gig maxtor (diamondmax plus 9). The kit is called the ADS USB 2.0 hard drive kit USBX-835. I plugged the USB cable in and turned the drive on, windows detected it and i went to the location of the win98se driver that I downloaded from the ADS tech site. The hdd kit was installed and everything went fine. Windows changed the drive letters to this:

A: floppy

C: primary master

D: dvd-rom

E: dvd-rw

F: hard drive kit

I then rebooted the computer, and the new drive letter config was this:

A: floppy

C: primary master

D: dvd-rom

E: dvd-rw

F: ???

G: hard drive kit

it now has 2 drive letters. I right clicked on my computer>properties and windows stated that drive F: was using the "MS-DOS compatibility mode", so I clicked for more information and it said somehting along the lines of "your driver must really suck." (sorry, im not actually on that computer right now, so i don't know what it really said.)

I then unplugged the hdd and letter G: went away, I rebooted to find a BSOD which said windows could not write to drie F:.

It does the EXACT same thing with my USB 128mb thumb drive. :weird:

How do I go about fixing this?

Any help is appreciated, thanks!

[eidenk]

I think you should try to use generic USB 2.0 drivers. The ADS drivers might just be buggy. I am using a USB HDD drive and a USB Pen drive without specific drivers installed for them. Albeit I am on Win ME.

Maybe Maximus Decim USB update for Win 98 is your solution.

Otherwise this may help : A USB troubleshooting FAQ

[Jlo555]

I'm pretty sure it's not the drivers for the hdd because the same thing happens with my mini usb thumb drive. Although, perhaps there are 2 buggy drivers, which I think is highly unlikely. I doubt windows 98 has generic drivers; and I'm actually surprised you didn't have to install drivers in winME, I guess millennium edition has its benefits.

[eidenk]

because the same thing happens with my mini usb thumb drive

But what drivers did you use to access the pen drive before installing the HDD Kit drivers ? Did you have the problem with your pen drive before ?

It seems Win ME has built-in support for USB storage devices. The lack of which is adressed I think, in Win 98, by Maximum Decim unofficial USB update, which you can find in a stickie of the Unofficial Win 98 SP2 subforum.

I forgot, I installed the nVidia USB drivers that were on my motherboard CD as well.

And my USB HDD adapter seems more rudimentary than yours. I am not sure whether I actually have specific drivers for it .

[Chozo4]

The kit is called the ADS USB 2.0 hard drive kit

Seems I'm not the only one who has had troubles with ADS' Drive kits. It seems to somehow partially disconnect itself during use and/or non-use after 5-10 minutes. It still shows connected and fine but accessing it after that time will indicate 'drive not ready'. If the drive was in use at the moment owever... the comp locks up for a time while it realizes it can no longer write to the drive. Only way to rectify the problem is to disconnect the enclosure from the comp then reconnect.

I have tried multiple new harddisks along with both ADS hard drive enclosures and ADS ext. drive enclosures. Same problems so... it seems to be the ADS driver problems or hardware faults on ADS' part and not the fault of the hard disks.

I still have these enclosures but moved on to using the enclosures by compusa. So far I've had zero problems with them instead.

Edited July 31, 2005 by Chozo4

[jcarle]

Bytecc enclosures like the ME-350 work great. I have two, one of which has a 250GB Western Digital inside. Love it to death.

[Jlo555]

Hm, I didn't even use the thing long enough on win98 to notice that other problem. I did try the Decim USB driver, and uhh, well let's just say the end result was a Blue Screen of Death, almost instantaneously after plugging the hdd into the usb port. I must say he had a VERY good idea of making windows 98 nativly support new popular USB devices.

It's kind of weird, I use to have a western digital external hdd which had no problems at all on windows 98.

I'm actually using windows 2000 on my computer right now because I don't know if some other people have noticed, but there are A LOT of new games being created (GTA: San Andreas for instance) that don't support any version of windows 98 OR ME. I've even seen some games that don't even support windows 2000 anymore. I hate getting pushed to upgrade like this, I've found myself to be stubborn with operating systems. It wasn't until the end of 2004 that I finally started seeing messages like "This program is only written for Windows 2000/XP."