China DOS Union

I got an 80G West Digital USB drive. Although the packaging is very nice and it says West Digital on it, under XP and 2000 it can't identify its manufacturer. I tried all kinds of software, hi2003 and so on, and none of them could identify it. Even West Digtal's
Data Lifeguard Tools Ver. 10.0 can't identify it. But this drive works very well under XP and 2000, and the speed is also excellent.

After I entered Dos using a WinMe boot disk, I could access all the USB drive partitions, but the speed was especially slow. When using Norton to back up and restore the system (with the backup on the USB drive), the USB drive first reads for about ten minutes, then starts working, and the speed is only 80-120Mb, extremely slow even my 4500 hard drive can do over 120mb. I have already tried most of the DOS USB drivers from the forum, but they all say Device not found.

My motherboard uses the nforce2 chipset. There is one EHCI controller and two OHCI controllers on the motherboard, and then there are three USB Root Hub. I don't know whether not finding the Device is because of the motherboard, or because the brand of this hard drive is rather "special"?

Please enlighten me, experts!

Is this USB drive made from a desktop hard drive put into an enclosure, or is it directly a very small USB drive?
If it's made from a desktop hard drive, the speed indeed may be a bit slower. Also, if the USB driver for the drive isn't running at 2.0, that is, if it's under USB1.1, the speed will be unbelievably slow.
I think the driver on your boot disk under DOS is probably USB1.1...

quote:
Is this USB drive made from a desktop hard drive put into an enclosure, or is it directly a very small USB drive?

I think it's made from a desktop hard drive. The hard drive is installed in a square hard drive enclosure, and on the back of the enclosure there is a power switch, a power connector, and a USB2.0 connector.

quote:
If the USB driver for the drive isn't running at 2.0, that is, if it's under USB1.1, the speed will be unbelievably slow. I think the driver on your boot disk under DOS is probably USB1.1...

No. I first entered Dos using a WinMe boot disk, without loading any drivers, and I was able to access the USB drive. Then I ran Ghost2003 to back up and restore the system, and the speed was very slow. Later, I tried many drivers from the forum, but the result was that none of them worked. They all said Device not found; neither USB1.1 nor USB2.0 could find it.

My motherboard assigns the USB interfaces like this: two OHCI controller control four USB1.1 interfaces, and one EHCI controls two USB2.0 interfaces. Each controller has a Hub (I think that's how it should be; in Device Manager I can see three USB Root Hub). I wonder whether it has something to do with the Hub?

It probably doesn't have much to do with the Hub. At least under WinXP or Win2000 your USB drive is very fast, while under DOS it is very slow, so it's probably a driver issue...
I suggest contacting the maker of the hard drive enclosure and asking whether they have a driver suitable for DOS. Maybe they will have a better solution.

What a pity......... a friend bought this for me, and I don't even know which agent made the hard drive enclosure. The packaging is quite good, and from the advertisement it says it's West digital. But unexpectedly, even their own software can't detect this USB drive. Although there is also a manual inside, there is no contact information, not even a website. (Only in the advertisement.) I just checked online, and it seems to belong to some foreign agent's product. Also, I just discovered on the bottom of the box that it actually says Made in China.

Finally, I'd also like to ask the moderator one more question: if a USB drive has no brand name, (meaning Windows can't detect any manufacturer information for it), will it also be like a graphics card or sound card and be impossible to drive?

If your USB drive is made from a desktop hard drive with an enclosure around it, the key lies in the driver for the hard drive enclosure; it has nothing much to do with the hard drive itself.
If the USB drive's brand can't be identified, that means there is no way to match it with the most suitable driver, and in general it won't be able to deliver its maximum performance... Your USB drive seems to be working normally in Win2000 and WinXP, and it can also be used in a WinME DOS boot disk, just a bit slowly, which shows that it still conforms to the Windows USB standard. It's just that WinME's driver under DOS may not be very complete, so the speed is relatively slow...

It's already pretty good if it can be used under Dos. Real usb2.0 only works when both the computer and the USB drive support it and XP is installed. My mobile hard drive (the kind that uses a notebook hard drive) only takes a little over 70 seconds to copy a 700MB CD image under XP, but under ME/98/2000, even with the USB 2.0 driver installed, it still takes about 6 minutes.

If you want to use USB drivers, it's best not to use them in a WinME/DOS8 boot disk, because its compatibility is too poor. It's better to try it with an MS-DOS 7.10 boot disk..

Got it, got it. I learned a lot. I used to think USB was very easy to use, (under Windows it really is ), now I know it also has its inconvenient sides, hehe! Thanks everyone for the help!