I have a strange situation trying to access some older PATA drives via a
PATA -> USB converter. I have a pile of disks I want to scan and
consolidate onto a newer SATA which has all sorts of room. The source
drives are a hodge-podge of 8 - 40GB drives form multiple manufacturers.
The odd problem I’m having is that the converter is quite happy to connect
every one of the drives from Seagate, Hitachi, Maxtor, even some real
odd-balls which are long out of production but it refuses to connect to the
Western Digital drives. These drives all test fine in another machine with
built-in PATA hardware but those WD drives refuse to cooperate with the USB
adapter. I’m running OS 11.1.
Anyone aware of some particular abnormality or unusual configurations in WD
drives? It’s not a show stopper but it has aroused my curiosity.
> I have a strange situation trying to access some older PATA drives via a
> PATA -> USB converter. I have a pile of disks I want to scan and
> consolidate onto a newer SATA which has all sorts of room. The source
> drives are a hodge-podge of 8 - 40GB drives form multiple manufacturers.
> The odd problem I’m having is that the converter is quite happy to connect
> every one of the drives from Seagate, Hitachi, Maxtor, even some real
> odd-balls which are long out of production but it refuses to connect to
> the Western Digital drives. These drives all test fine in another machine
> with built-in PATA hardware but those WD drives refuse to cooperate with
> the USB
> adapter. I’m running OS 11.1.
Quite curious, indeed.
What behavior are you experiencing with this WD (hard disk not recognized at
all -not listed in ‘demsg’-, detected but with errors when accessing…)?
I’d first check: jumpers, usb cable and ports and power.
> Will Honea wrote:
>
>> I have a strange situation trying to access some older PATA drives via a
>> PATA → USB converter. I have a pile of disks I want to scan and
>> consolidate onto a newer SATA which has all sorts of room. The source
>> drives are a hodge-podge of 8 - 40GB drives form multiple manufacturers.
>> The odd problem I’m having is that the converter is quite happy to
>> connect every one of the drives from Seagate, Hitachi, Maxtor, even some
>> real odd-balls which are long out of production but it refuses to connect
>> to the Western Digital drives. These drives all test fine in another
>> machine with built-in PATA hardware but those WD drives refuse to
>> cooperate with the USB
>> adapter. I’m running OS 11.1.
>
> Quite curious, indeed.
>
> What behavior are you experiencing with this WD (hard disk not recognized
> at all -not listed in ‘demsg’-, detected but with errors when
> accessing…)?
>
> I’d first check: jumpers, usb cable and ports and power.
demsg was no help - this one has me scratching my head. From other testing,
this particular USB converter has some sort of timeout that actually
de-activates it after a few minutes if no drive is attached - sort of a
hotplug detector apparently. When I attach something other than a WD
drive, the system first sees the adapter as a device, then flails about
mounting the partitions on the attached drive. With a WD drive, the
adapter wakes up and is seen by the system. It then goes through the same
apparent activity accessing the drive but eventually times out. I’m
wondering if it is a power issue inside the USB adapter or a “minor” pinout
difference in the 40-pin drive connector or the power connector.
AHA! That got me looking! The power cable that came with the converter has
only one of the two ground pins wired! Jumpering the two ground pins on
the drives fixes the issue. Apparently, WD has some sort of split ground
from the power connector to the internals.