External Hard Drive Recognized on One System But not Another

Question

I have an NTFS filesystem on an external hard drive in an enclosure (SSD). I use this for web development on two Windows systems (A, laptop and B, desktop). I assigned the drive letter as G: because I wanted absolute paths for PHP to be consistent.

The enclosure was giving me trouble so I switched to another (went from Ineo to Sabrent). This new enclosure uses a double cable, one for USB 3 and the other, presumably, for power. I plug in both for the laptop, and the same for the desktop, except the desktop USB card actually has power too. I've tried this drive/enclosure with and without the power cable portion from the external drive. Doesn't seem to matter.

I should add that this drive with both computers USB 3 ports has worked in the past. The new enclosure mixed with the desktop system seems to be the issue. Also, I can plug the drive/enclosure into a standard USB 2 port and it seems to work. I have a 6 foot USB 3 extension cable running from the USB 3 card on the desktop to my desk, in which I'm plugging the SSD/enclosure with its cable.

The drive is recognized on one Windows 7 system (A) just fine but then when I plug it in to another (B), Windows tries to tell me to reformat the drive to use it.

I then noticed that it was assigning the drive a letter H when doing this because there were already partitions taking up, C, D, E, F and G. I went back in to the system that runs the drive without problems (A) and switched the drive letter to X, thinking this would keep it clear of everything. My thinking is that I can go in and modify PHP configuration settings gain, but with X instead of G. If this works, I'm OK with changing to X this time.

Now the same problem occurs. The system that didn't run it correctly (B) still is not running it correctly. Still assigning it letter H.

I'm looking for a way to reset this connection or otherwise get it to work. I have tried reinstalling the drivers to no avail. I suppose I do not have to manually set drive letters, but it's nice to have the consistency.

Has anyone had this kind of problem? I suppose it could be that the new enclosure and cable aren't compatible with the USB 3 card on the desktop system. But I really would like to run it at the higher speeds on this system.

Thanks in advance.

EDIT

I think I have found another clue. When I plug the drive, with its own cable, directly into the USB 3 card on the desktop, it runs as it should, with assigned letter, X. So now it seems the extension cable I was using is the culprit. Is it possible that the power just isn't enough when going through the cable?

Solution

It turned out that the USB 3 extension cable I've been using cannot deliver the needed power. Not sure why that is, but it seems the cable wasn't designed for power as well as signal. I actually spoke to the manufacturer and despite the technician telling me the cable is rated to deliver over an amp, I tested it and it doesn't.

So what I did was just plug the drive straight into the USB 3 card installed through PCIe and it works fine. As X: it also works fine in the USB 3 port on my laptop.

I think I might get another USB 3 cable to see if I can get it to work.

Thanks for the help.

Comments

[nicorellius]

Yah, good question: when the problem is occurring, the disk manager locks up on computer B. Like it cannot load data when the drive is in this state.