1. Setting Hard Drives as Master Drives

Hard drives must be set as Master drives when used in a FireDrive drive enclosure. In some hard cases this involves moving a jumper on the drive. In other cases (such as older Western Digital drives), this requires removing a jumper located on the hard drive. Hard drives typically are marked with instructions on setting them as Master or Slave drives; follow the instructions provided by your drive’s manufacturer.

2. Formatting Drives

LAVA Technical Support recommends installing an already-formatted hard drive into the FireDrive/Kazan Drive Enclosure. New drives may already be formatted by the manufacturer. FAT or FAT32 formatted drives are the easiest to troubleshoot. Some NTFS-partitioned drives occasionally may not work.

To externally format a hard drive in Windows, attach the drive to a motherboard connector and format it with FDISK.EXE before installing it into the external drive enclosure.

If it is not possible to format the hard drive before installing it into the drive enclosure (in the case of notebook computers, for instance), it is possible to format the hard drive inside the enclosure when using Windows 2000 or XP.

Windows 2000/XP formatting instructions:

1) Go to “My Computer | Control Panel | Administrative Tools | Computer Management |

Storage | Disk Management.”

2) The “Write Signature and Upgrade Disk” wizard will appear. If your drive was previously formatted, go to step 6.

3) PREVIOUSLY UNFORMATTED DRIVES: In the “Select Disk to Upgrade” window, choose the disk installed in the LAVA IDE drive enclosure.

4) PREVIOUSLY UNFORMATTED DRIVES: In the “Completing the Write Signature and Upgrade Disk” wizard click “Finish”.

5) PREVIOUSLY UNFORMATTED DRIVES: The disk signature will be identified as “Dynamic.” Right-click on “Revert to Basic Disk”.

6) Right-click on the disk you have just created. Choose “Create Partition.”

7) In the “Create Partition” wizard specify the partition type, partition size and, if requested, assign a drive letter/path for the drive.

8) Choose “Format Partition” and select the File System to use. Choose the “Perform Quick Format” option.

9) In the “Completing the Create Partition” wizard window, click “Finish”.

3. Windows Error Messages

At times Windows’ Device Manager or the Properties dialog box of the drive’s System Tray icon will give a “This device cannot start (Code 10)” error message or a “This device is either not present, not working properly, or does not have all the drivers installed (Code 28″ error message when attempting to access a drive in a FireDrive.

First ensure that the power, data, and IDE cables are all correctly and snugly attached. Check the power supply’s LED indicator is green to verify it is operating. If the problem persists, ensure that the hard drive has been formatted as described above.

4. Drive Data Capacity

The limit on drive size for the IDE drive enclosure is set by the limit of addressability in the industry-standard ATA specification for hard drives generally. In the case of the ATA interface implemented in the drive enclosure, 28 bits are given to the sector number interface between the operating system, the BIOS, and the hard disk. A hard disk can therefore have at most 2^28 or 268,435,456 sectors of 512 bytes. The ATA interface, and the drive enclosure as a result, has a maximum capacity of approximately 137.4 GB.

5. Western Digital drives

Some new Western Digital drives do not work in the FireDrive enclosure. Western Digital drives manufactured after November 15, 2001 should NOT have this problem.

6. Windows 98SE Patch for IEEE 1394 Operation

Users of Windows 98SE can download the following patch to the operating system from Microsoft: Windows 98 Second Edition 1394 Storage Supplement ? http://www.microsoft.com/windows98/downloads/contents/wurecommended/s_wufeatured/1394/Default.asp

Microsoft says:

The update installs a Safe Removal utility that allows you to safely stop a Plug and Play storage device prior to physically unplugging the device. This component also includes an update for 1394 drivers to resolve issues related to the surprise removal of peripheral devices. Large performance improvements, in the order of 300%, have been made over the implementation of 1394 storage drivers in Windows 98 Second Edition.

Problem:

The Mac does not detect the FireDrive.

Cause:

The Mac OS does not install mass storage device support during the OS install.

Solution:

This solution only applies to Mac OS 8 & 9 (There is no current support for OS X).

1) Download the “firewire_extensions.sit” file by clicking here.

2) Unstuff it and transfer the files to your extensions folder.

3) Plug in and turn on the FireDrive.

4) Restart your Macintosh. The FireDrive should come online.

LAVA’s FireDrive is an IEEE 1394 device. In systems with native IEEE 1394 support it is easy to install - just plug it in and it configures with drivers shipped with Windows.
Step 1: Plug in the FireDrive. The following screen will appear. Hit OK.

The next screen that appears asks you to specify the location of the device drivers on the Windows installation CD. Specify the location, then Hit OK and Windows will install drivers for a 1394 storage device (SBP2 serial bus protocol 2).

To check that your FireDrive in configured in Windows, you should see the following entries in Windows Device Manager.

Under the entry “Disk Drives” in Windows 98SE and Windows ME, the FireDrive will appear as the make and model of the hard drive you have placed in the FireDrive enclosure.

In Windows 2000 the FireDrive will appear as below.

Congratulations: you’re finished.

At times when using the FireDrive with Windows 2000 or Windows XP a “Delayed write error” will appear. This message may also be accompanied by corrupted or cross-linked files on the FireDrive’s hard disk. To fix this problem, follow the steps below:

1) Enter the disk management utility which is located under Control Panel >Administrative Tools > Computer Management.

2) In the right hand window, each of the drives in your system will be listed. For each one, right click on the drive and select “Change Drive Letter and Path.”

3) In the window that appears, highlight the drive again and select “Edit” (or “Change” in XP). Leave the settings as they are and select OK (or Cancel in XP as the OK button is grayed out).

4) Below the listing of drives will be a graphical interpretation of the partition table. For each device (ie. Zip Drives, CD-RW, etc.) right-click and again choose “Change Drive Letter and Path” and then exit the window.

5) Reboot your computer and attempt a file transfer.