Front USB ports not recognizing Ext HDD ??? Only Rear Ones Recognize

[FightingChance]

Just out of curiosity, what case do you have plainman?

[plainman007]

Its an iball tower case.

[zman88]

What HD enclosure are you using?

[plainman007]

You mean for my external disk ? I really know nothing that deep. Im not that well versed in hardware. Its a silver thing (a sleek aluminium case) which is thin like a chocolate slab. Its 40gb in capacity. If there is some technique to find out after connecting it to the PC then please let me know and ill do that.
Thanks

[zman88]

Did you try plugging both shorter ends in ? It looks like that MB is usb 2.0, so unless it has to be enabled in the bios or a jumper on the board, I think its just a power prob.

[Drufuss]

Originally Posted by plainman007

And it has a usb cable that splits into 2 usb plugs. The split cables are of unequal length. One being long and the other being short.

Can i try plugging in the short cable into the front usb port ?

When you have such a cable, you should always plug both ends into ports.
(You normally have 2 USB ports on the front).
One of the plugs is for the data transfer, the others one is for powering the hdd.

Greetings

Dru

[plainman007]

i tried connecting both at once. The led on the ext drive immediately starts blinking red - green alternating. But the drive still doesnt show up in MY COMPUTER ,,,,What should i do ?

[zman88]

I say buy another cable and leave it plugged into the rear.

[zman88]

Also if you have the manual for the mobo and case you can check to see if the wires are connected to the mobo headers correctly.

[plainman007]

Im sure i cant identify that.
Ive once tried reading a MB manual and just gave up.
Extremely technical and binary in nature.

[zman88]

Well, just get another cable then. If it works in the back with just one lead plugged in , then you can just buy a single(without the Y) at Best buy or some place.

[plainman007]

The cable works fine on the rear port. Without using the power usb end at all.
The same cable works perfect on my laptop too. In fact the same front usb non recognition problem was there on my friends computer also. Even on his system when we connected in the back it worked. So im guessing its not the cable problem i think. Because ive seen the cables in the market and they look crappy compared to this one. This is the orginal which came with the ext HDD.

[zman88]

I know the cable is fine. But you said it was a pain to get to the rear of the computer to plug and unplug it. So if you buy another cable you can just leave it plugged into the rear and still have the original cable to take with you and what not.

[plainman007]

Zman > Sorry i didnt get what you actually meant. But i tried that too. I got aa duplicate longer 1 Mtr cable. Damn thing wouldnt work at all. Not with the front or back usb. So i think ill only have to use it as a dog collar. When i get a high tech USB dog . Would only work with usb 2.0 dogs though. .

[zman88]

Some one else may know better than me , but, I suppose the usb cable for an external HDD is different in some way than a regular usb cable.

I do know 1 thing, it has to be a usb 2.0 cable.