I installed an external WD 200GB HD using the PL3507 chipset via firewire. Everything has been working fine for the last couple of weeks following data transfer of images and music. I was copying additional files to the drive when it crashed and I'm currently unable to access the drive at all. I'm on XP (2002) SP1. XP recognizes the drive as attached (shows the Prolific device and generic volume H.

Attempts to access H: result in the following message: Clicking on the drive iRan chkdsk h:\ and get the following: "H:\ is not accessible. The file or directory is corrupted and unreadable."

I also ran CHKDSK H:\ froma DOS prompt and got the following message: "The type of the file system is NTFS. Unable to determine volume version and state. CHKDSK aborted."

Also, when I check properties of H:\, all I get is Local Disk, File System: RAW and shows 0 bytes available/used.

Any help is appreciated -- I'm desperate as the data (photos of my 2-yr old daughter for the last 6 months) is irreplaceable!

Thanks in advance.

Mike

Oops.......doesn't sound good I'm afraid.

I can't think of any solutions to regain access to the drive, which sounds like it has completely lunched itself (it may be worth trying a different Firewire port or PC, but to be honest that's a real shot in the dark), but there are a number of companies who may be able to recover much, if not all, of your data. Do a Google search for "hard drive recovery" for some examples.

Critical data (including irreplaceable photo's of loved ones) should be backed up in three places, one of which should be a non rewritable format (such as CD-R etc). Good luck.

Hi, I'm having the same exact problems with a Speeze combo enclosure I purchased from Newegg. I'm using Windows XP Pro SP1, with a Western Digital Special Edition 250 GB hard drive formatted to NTFS. Apparently, this is a problem with enclosures using the Prolific PL3507 firewire chipset. I was able to recover my data using GetDataBack (it takes an hour or two). If you reformat afterwards, it works fine for a few days, and then that blasted error message reappears. I've read in other forums that upgrading the firmware helps, but the Prolific website no longer hosts the downloads. I'm trying to get a refund from Newegg as of this very moment, and am going to try the Kingwin combo enclosure which uses the reputable Oxford 911 firewire chipset. I'll let you know if it's any better.

Good luck with your data!

My strictly advice:
Stay away from HD's in firewire enclosures patitioned over 120 GB. This seems not to be the supported size! Although others tell you: Ther's no problem. Just do a irmware-upgrade.

I tested 3 enclosures and all produced the same errors: Data went corrupt, when i had hit the limit of 120/137GB.

my experience:
Enclosure1: oxford --> Bios-Update -->still problems
Enclosure2(again: oxford): all fine, but JPG-problems, since the hd was nearly full (a 160GB maxtor)
Enclosure3(Prolific PL-3507): stupid messages telling me the HD is about 1TB

Cionclusio:
Firewire sucks! Use it only for small HD's. At the moment I'm not really shure if it's a good idea, trying to partition the hd at 120GB. Or if it's simply better using only native smal HD's.

I place 250gb in the ide1 primary also met this problem, the extended volume crashed, but the primary volume in this hard disk is still working, maybe I need make one big partition as primary to avoid it.

I have placed it in Prolific enclosure through firewire, it failed before, so I think maybe not the problem of enclosure, it is the problem of windows 2000 and xp and 137gb barrier.

I will test it to see.

You can get programs that recover information off of corrupt drives, your pictures are not gone (though this post was made 2 years ago), but i am having the same problem!!! It keeps crashing, anyone know of any solutions to this yet?

I've been using 1394 drives with windows for years and never had a single problem until now.. all previous 1394 bridges have been oxford 911 and 912.. I bought 2 new 1394/usb2 combos ME-320U2F enclosures from Monoprice.com and found they contained PL3507 bridges.. I didn't think much about it until I started having problems with corrupted drives. I've had to recover both drives, twice in the past 3wks.. Today one of the drives isn't being detected by W2k or Wxp.. Which why Im here.. .. But if you're having trouble with PL3507s I think the problem lies within its poor design.

Dont rule out smaller drives with the PL-3507 I have had it corrupt to drives in a week

fist a 10gb and then a 4gb ( I sacrificed for the sake of testing)

This is a CompUSA Brand SKU 306103

Prolific PL-3507 Firmware
HD crashed when writing block larger than 132K ???
How to update firware, what firmware is supposed to correct DWF???

Problems with a Gigapod enclosure
(chip inside has a label that says: PL-3507 04284C)
Is this the "version C"??

Drive is 7200rpm 20G UDMA4, plugged as master
********************************************************************
1394test.exe works OK on a slow machine: too slow to write more than 132K in one go...
(200mhz), Berkin Firewire, W2K professional SP2
***********************************************************************
1394test.exe stops at 50% on a Dell
660Mhz, Adaptec duo connect (AUA-3121/EFIGS), W2K Prof SP4

Tried updating Firmwire:

On the slow machine, had to connect the box thru USB1 connection.

Romburner 214 says:
rom size: 32kb
FW: ver2004.04.07.108
Vendor: 0X02
Chipid: 0X2D
Checksum: 9B27
But udate attempt ends up with: can't access the chip (be rejected!)

Romburner 204B read ok and gives same info,
Write attemps seems ok, but does not change anything:
same version etc when read back even after a complete power down reset.

What did I do wrong???

Check out the following thread for firmware upgrade.
http://www.bustrace.com/products/delayedwrite.htm

Hi, i was wondering if anyone had any luck attaching two IDE's to the device (master and slave). So far I wasn't able to get even one harddrive to work unless i set the harddrive to cable select and attach it to slave.

The firmware problem i'll have to deal with too =)

Hi,
The external box cause several problems.
First the 137Go limit on windows versions before xp SP1.
Second the prolific 3507 chipset with firewire connection.
In most of case, change the controller card, is the easier and best way to fix the problem.
How to test if your configuration could be affected: http://www.bustrace.com/downloads/free_utilities.htm (1394 Delayed Write Stress Tester).
A soft way to deal with: http://member.newsguy.com/~siccos/Max128k.htm.
A good link in french: http://forum.hardware.fr/hfr/Hardware/HDD/firmware-icy-box-suj...233_1.htm.

Anyway be careful if you are using your external case, with another computer, you may lost all your data !!!
All the details on https://www.osgpcq.net/osg/Documentations/A_disquedurexterne.html (In french sorry).
Best regards.

Mike,
I'd say the easiest way to check if drive is good, is to remove it from case and hook up as an internal HDD.
If the drive is larger than 127/137GB, and you are running anything pre XP SP1, you have likely scrambled data. However you may still be able to recover some of it.

Sounds like possibility of bad ribbon cable or chip is messed up.