I recently bought an external hard drive case so that I could back up all of my files. I’ve been running XP (yeah, yeah, I could be using Linux but the software for my Mini-Disc Player and Tablet Pen only works on windows), and thought it would be simple as plug-and-play. I had an old hard drive lying around, so I put it in the case and plugged it in. Sure enough, Windows was nice enough to alert me a “USB Mass Storage Device” was detected, but after hearing that nice little bell that indicates Windows found some new hardware, I was puzzled that no drive icon appeared in Explorer.

Initially thinking that it was my installation of Windows, I tried it on my laptop but to no avail. A quick google didn’t give me any better information, so I went back to basics and tried playing with the jumper settings. Sure enough, it appeared that cable-select mode was not enough and the pins had to be specifically set for Master mode. Now, to script the backup process…