Docking Station not reading 500Gb wd5000aaks Caviar drives

I have a docking station which I have been using to transfer between hard drives during upgrades and disc interchanging.

Is there a reason that these drives are not recognised by the docking station?

It works well with other makes of drives.

Do they need the jumpers set to be read by the station?

Any useful information most welcome.

Hi Anthony

Do these drives that don’t work on your dock, do they work on other devices(computer/other docks)?

Indeed they do. I have had them installed in a couple of devices, a desktop and another 2 drive storage box.

Thanks for taking the time to respond.

Anthony

Hi Anthony,

The only thing i can think of is, if there are jumpers take them off. Normally with the new drives they don’t bother with jumpers anymore as software and motherboards have advance so much. Here is a link to what the jumpers do, see if this helps.

http://www.wdc.com/wdproducts/library/other/2579-001037.pdf

Thanks for getting back to me.

I have no jumpers attached.

I did have another Western digital drive 1Tb (WD1001FALS) which sits in the docking station and is recognised and readable so I guess I shall ahve to try to assess if there are any reasons for this disparity.

Its just these two 500Gb Caviar ones which are not being read or recognised.

Thanks again for you input.

I am not at the stage of using a hammer but I shall take on board your suggestion for possible future reference. I have the very hammer in mind!

Great stuff, normally know as percussion maintenances  :smileyvery-happy:

It’s odd that only those hard drive are the problem - Silly question, they are using the same connection right?SATA?

Indeed they are.

I tested them in my G5 Mac Pro and they are recognised and readable so its appears to be an issue which affects them in the docking station.

I can’t see any reason for them not being read at all. They use the same voltage etc. I am sure that I have used these drives before in the docking station but there has been a bit of chopping and changing out of drives over the last few years so I can’t be sure.

Its as ever a learning experience trying to find out what the issue is here.

I’ll give that hammer a polish just in case!

The only problem with the hammer solution is it is very hard to come back from it:smileyvery-happy:

The only other thing i can think of is maybe looking at the docks specs - What can it handle?