External Hard Drive Problems

[TheCrowe14]

I've had a 160 GB USB 2.0 external drive that I've been using for over a year. I've never had any problems with it, and it still works fine today. But, I recently bought one of these:
http://www.buy.com/prod/Western_Dig...irewire_External_Hard/q/loc/101/10362387.html

When I got it, I installed the backup software stuff, hooked it up, and got delayed write errors every time I tried to write to it. After these errors, I'd get an error about a usb device malfunctioning and Windows not being able to detect it. I tried the drive on a different computer, same result. I RMA'd it and got a second with the same problem. I RMA'd it. The third had a different problem. As soon as I plugged it in, the hard drive came on. The power button did nothing - plugging it in or unplugging it were the only ways to turn it on or off. Also, it wouldn't show up in My Computer. I took the enclosure apart and mounted the drive internally. It worked perfectly. I made 3 partitions - one to install Ubuntu, one for a linux swap file, and one for storage. I installed Ubuntu. With the drive mounted internally, I could boot Ubuntu from it, or boot windows and use the storage partition to store stuff. I did both multiple times with no problems. I bought one of these
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817173019

I installed the drive in this. Now, when I plug the drive in it says 'detected new hardware: usb mass storage device' followed by 'detected new hardware: disk drive' followed by 'your hardware is installed and ready to use'. The drive, however, does NOT appear in My Computer or Disk Management, but a USB Mass Storage device and the disk drive both appear in the Device Manager. I tried a second computer and got very similar results. Any ideas how to fix this?

Other info:
The drive is a WD CaviarSE 250gb drive, IDE.
I mounted it as the slave when I had it internally.
My computer is a Dell Dimension 4700 with WinXP.

 

[TheCrowe14]

I took a really old maxtor hard drive out of an old computer I found - 1.24 gb. I hooked up using the enclosure I bought and it works fine, meaning that for some reason the Western Digital drive works internally but not when I use it in an enclosure. Is there any possibility that the problem is related to the multiple partitions I have set up?

Do you have to worry about jumper settings with an external drive?

 

[Raffaz]

Not 100% sure about this, but when ya set up the drive internally, did you make it a dynamic disc? If you have done this then, it might not work when ya change it to USB. Can ya take a look in your event viewer and see what errors (if any) you have. And look in computer management and see what the drive is registering as when its connected internally and externally.