maximum hard drive storage on usb in vista.

[fatherted]

I had a 40gb ide/usb2 on my quad core( cannot open machine its under warrenty) thought i would add more drives on usb2 added 2 sata drives(2@200gb) and they work fine, tried to add 2 ide drives onto my usb2 and the system does not see them, is it vista thats the problem?

[patio]

I believe the limits are in the terrabyte range...so it shouldn't be size.
Are the drives formatted ? ?
How do they show up in Disk Management ? ?

[fatherted]

yes drives are formatted. Even the orginal small drive will not worl while the sata/usb drives are connected

[patio]

Please re-state which drives you have currently in your system....and how each of them is connected.
IDE/USB needs clarification especially...

[fatherted]

1 sata drive internally, 5 drives externally, all external drives are connected to seperate usb ports through direct connection to the pc or a hub

[patio]

Are the drives in caddies or enclosures ? ?
Are they self powered ? ?
Is the hub self powered also ? ?

Are you trying to run these on the Front USB connections ?
Sounds as if there's not enough juice to run 5 HDD's externally...

[programming_pat]

go to device manager. look undeer universal seriel bus and right click on your hub. On the power tab it will tell you how much power is avaliable per port and how much is being used

[fatherted]

tried all advice, no difference if non working drives are connected to front usb. All external drives are housed in an old pc case useing its power supply, I might wait a bit and break the warrenty and open the case and install all the disks inside it. Tis christams time (well near anyway) and I have other things to do like open all the bottles of barley sugar and eat all the food till I am sick. Then I will come back to my PC. Thank you all for your advice and a very merry christmas and a happy new year, see you in 2008..


POST CLOSED

[patio]

I would contact the manuf. and state that you need the extra storage and plan on having it done at a professionaly Certified repair facility but you want your Warranty to remain intact....

You can then do it yourself of course.
No need to mention 5 drives...just extra storage.

Merry Christmas to you as well and Happy New Year.