Anyone familiar with WinHiip and USB attached HDDs?

[crashwg]

I don't feel like joining another forum just to figure this out but if I have to I will...

I just got a USB2 to IDE cable for the purpose of transferring games to my PS2 HDD.  So I hook it up according to the directions and WinXP says "Found new hardware.  USB mass storage device" then nothing.

WinHiip doesn't seem to recognize it I don't get a "your device is ready to use" or whatever message, heck I don't even hear the drive spin...

Any idea?

<edit>
OK, I'm pretty sure I got a bad power supply with this thing...
I picked up the PS while it was "running" and the PS made a loud hissing sound and then I heard the drive spin up.  I think I'll be dropping meritline a message.
</edit>

[grueinthebox]

Check Disk Management to see if it shows up but lacks a drive letter...  Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Computer Management, Disk Management under storage.  If so, assign it a drive letter.  Have had that problem with XP and some USB storage devices on my system at work.

[boykster]

Check Disk Management to see if it shows up but lacks a drive letter...  Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Computer Management, Disk Management under storage. 

Yes, do this

If so, assign it a drive letter.  Have had that problem with XP and some USB storage devices on my system at work.

No, don't need to do this.  the drive SHOULD show up in the computer management/disk management, but there's no need to assign a letter, in fact it's probably a bad thing as windoze likes to add its own signature to the drive and you don't want it to do that.  Winhiip should be able to see the drive and make it available in the dropdown selector as long as it shows up in disk management.

sounds like your PS is bad....

[Strokemouth]

Assigning a drive letter should be fine unless you choose to initialize the disk, which you may prompted to do if it is already formatted for the PS2. Just cancel the wizard if it comes up.

[Smoker]

You can only assign a drive letter after it is initialized and has a valid fat/ntfs partition.

It has to be the power supply causing problems. you can check by plugging the power from inside the computer to the drive and then attaching the usb cable, if it works that way then you know for sure its just a bad power supply on the external enclosure.

[Strokemouth]

Ah, right you are! I could've sworn I had to assign a letter to my PS2 hard drive, but upon checking, it was actually a different drive I had dropped in at the same time (found an 80GB SATAII drive for $11 a while back).

So, you don't need to assign a drive letter to the PS2 hard drive. WinHiip should find it anyways.

[crashwg]

I had WinHiip recognizing the drive...  When I picked it up and it made that horrible noise! 

So now my dilemma is this.  The adapter was like $12 or something right.  So if I RMA it back to meritline, it's going to cost me almost just as much as it's worth to ship this one to them and have the new one shipped to me!     I have no idea how to fix a hissing power supply.