I have just purchased an external hard drive enclosure media player. It clearly states that it will accept IDE or SATA drives so I bought an SATA.
There were various supllied cables marked SATA and I connected all I could. But the large wide fitted ribbon connector obviously is not meant for this drive so I removed it. So now all I have connected is a small 4 pin red cable and a larger 4 pin power cable and nothing works. I am now stuck as to know what to do and any help would be most welcome.
many thanks.

Can you post a link to this enclosure?

The ribbon is an IDE connection. SATA uses the small 4 pins as you say.

Is this an USB connection to the computer?

Any idea if the enclosure is SATA I or SATA II?

Any idea if your USB is USB 1 or USB 2?

When you say "nothing works" are you saying the drive is not detected anywhere?

Is it seen in My Computer? If not is it seen in Disk Management? If so it needs to be formatted.

Originally Posted by jephree

Can you post a link to this enclosure?

The ribbon is an IDE connection. SATA uses the small 4 pins as you say.

Is this an USB connection to the computer?

Any idea if the enclosure is SATA I or SATA II?

Any idea if your USB is USB 1 or USB 2?

When you say "nothing works" are you saying the drive is not detected anywhere?

Is it seen in My Computer? If not is it seen in Disk Management? If so it needs to be formatted.

Thanks so much for your reply. I have now got it working, i had put the power supply onto the jumper terminals in error.
many thanks.