I had a desktop motherboard that crashed. I ordered the metal gear box to put my 2 IDE drives into so I could access the data on them. One drive is a samsung and it works fine. The other is a WD and it shows up in my device manager, and in the "unplug or eject hardware" window, but it does not show up in "my computer". The drive seems to be missing a drive letter and I cannot access it. I've tried all the possible jumper settings. Any ideas? many thanks

What operating system are you using?

In Windows 2000, go to Start, Settings, Control Panel, Administrator Tools, Computer Management, Disk Manager

Is your WD hard drive appearing? What is the status? Was it formatted and previously operating okay?

Yes, I am running 2000--When I look in the disk manager, I do not see the drive. The only place it appears is in the "unplug or eject hardware" function. It shows up as WDC AC36 400L USB device, but there is no drive letter associated with it. The drive was my non-system drive in my desktop before the motherboard crashed. It was formatted and functioning correctly before the crash. Thank you--JJ

It is possible the external case is not compatible with that specific hard drive. How big is the capacity on the Hard Drive?

The drive is only 6.4 gigs, it's an older WD Caviar. From the other reviews I have read on the external case, this is not the first instance of these cases choosing random drives to ignore. I guess maybe I will have to return the case and search out another brand.

Ok if you read the reviews for the Metal Gear Box it clearly says that WD Drives are not supprted by this enclosure especially the old ones. SO live with the enclosure. It has great air flow and I plan to get one my self.

Remove the jumper. On some WD drives, this will solve the problem.

Thomas, Denmark

Make sure your drive is formatted. If it is not formatted, it will do exactly what you describe: appear in the USB dialog but not as a drive letter. I was able to format the drive using Computer Management (Click on the submenu Disk Management; it should show you the drive is unformatted and give you the option to format it/change the partition table.)

I wish someone had told me about these "WD Issues." I read reviews of the Metal Gear Box before I bought it and didn't come across anything about unsupported western digital drives. So along with the new enclosure I bought a brand-spanking new WD Caviar. I put the whole thing together, plugged it in and viola...NOTHING. The HD was trying to spin up again and again but would never actually work. I tried putting a 30 GB Maxtor I had lying around and the same thing happened. Then I went back to the WD, this time the HD wouldn't even try to spin up. So, I took apart an old bytecc case which is in bad shape from being hauled around every day, put the new WD inside and booted it up. The drive appears as "Oxford Semiconductor LTD," the chipset in the case. It appears the sameway on both my PowerBook and my Dell XP machine. In OS X Disk Utility, the drive tries to erase and format but never sucessfully completes the task. In XP, Disk Manager manages to crash each and every time I try to format it. So I'm thinking I have a $130 paperweight and a $50 P.O.S. case.

On the plus side, I took my bytecc case apart, used a dremel tool to cut the metal housing on the back to match the size of the Metal Gear Case, and mounted the Oxford 911 Chipset in the new case. At least I got a $50 enclosure makeover for the bytecc case and my other HD. As for the brand new WD, I'm going to have to experiment some more to see if it is salvageable.

The bottom line, Mac or PC (I've read mac users bragging about how well this enclosure works on an apple,) this produce is horrible. Its not worth the time or the money. I'm lucky in that I lost no data, many users I've seen have lost the functionality of the HD as well as TONS of data. All you prospective buyers be warned of the wrath of Metal Gear Box.

> this produce is horrible

Honestly, I've never had any complaints about the Metal Gear Box. If you're installing an older hard drive, I think most cases would have issues since a modern external case expects a modern drive. I recently had a customer return a external case (not Metal Gear Box) due to fan noise. I exchanged it for the Metal Gear Box and he is very happy. I don't know what kind of hard disk drive he is using, but he had no complaints. I've also never had a return on the Metal Gear Box case, so that gives me some weight with the product.

As for Mac compatibility - that's an entirely different world with its own set of hardware and chipsets that only a Mac user would know the details about.

I am sorry to hear you have had a negative experience with the product. I am sure it is warranted in your situation. For me, I would happyily use the product.

i haven't had time to read the whole thread, so please dont kill me if this has already been said but...

I have a 20G WD HDD in the speed metal box with the prolific pl3507 chiset. I had similar connection problems to the ones described and found updated firmware solved them.
The prolific site is
[url=]http://tech.prolific.com.tw[/url]

Dunno if this of any help

Sorry about the misspelling (produce = product.)

I'll have to look into the firmware update.

In my experimentation/play with the metal gear box chipset I found that when I bend the logic board slightly I can get it to power-up. Power-up meaning I can get the blue LED's to light up (my case has the blue lights.) When the I remove pressure for the board the lights go off. This leads me to believe I have a short or disconnect in the circuit board somewhere, which ultimately could have led to some of my problems.

Perhaps this maybe a situation in which I received a defective product and I'm attributing my bad experience to a "bad product." However, I will never really know since I'm not going to buy another case to test this theory.

There also seems to be a reoccurring issue with WD drives. I'm going to try to flash my chipset if I can get an updated firmware version. I'll post with the results of that when I have them.

Ugh. Major problems. It may have fried my (s)Hitachi drive, but, with drives, it's always hare to tell. I will try to get refunds all around.

It was functional with Linux 2.8.6, until I tried to copy a DVD that also used Firewire. It stopped working. I had to reboot to get the drive bak.

Ooops. It must have been 5 in the morning when I wrote that. I was using Linux 2.6.8, not 2.8.6. Also, "hard" not "hare".

Hi there, I need major help!!

About a month ago, I bought a Samsung hard drive and put in into a Metal Gear Box. Everything worked fine for a while, until today when I went to go turn it on and hook it up, and the hard drive started making this CLICKING noise and would not be recognized by my computer.

Now sometimes, if I just turn it on without any USB plugged into the box, there's no clicking and it runs fine. But as soon as I try to plug in the USB into the Box and then into my Laptop, the clicking noise begins.

Please, is there anything I can do to fix this on my own? Any support would be amazing!!

Hey, I am having issues with my Metal Gear Box External Hard drive also, I too cannot connect to it, there is no letter drive, I am operating on XP so i am not sure why i can't access the drive.

I am using the Metal Gearbox Case with a WD 200GB IDEI HD inside the closure.

The HD powers up spins for 3 seconds then looses all power.. waits a second then tries to power up again. continuosly.. It basicaly refuses to work.. However if i try again in a weeks time.. it may work for a a while... then stop again...

The HD jumper is set to Master/Slave and does not make a difference if I put it over to Cable Select..

If i Put another 80GB Seagate HD into the same Metal Gearbox Case it works 100%

so what is the issue with these cases and WD 200GB HD's ? Has anyone had similiar/same issues ?

The WD 200GB works 100% fine when i plug it in internaly into my Desktop machine

So the WD 200GB HD works fine and
the Metal Gearbox Case works fine

the problem is when you combine these 2

Can anyone help please... this is frustrating the hell out of me.

I recently bought a Metal Gear 5.25 and had a similar problem. Whenever my XP machine would go into stadby, the drive would crash. Completely crash. Turn the file system from NTFS to RAW. Since Tiger Direct sells it as a PPA Aluminum drive. I searched for PPA and found PPA USA. Their tech suppot emailed me a firmware updater along with the hex file I would need to update it. I updated it and I'm re-formatting right now. Hopefully it's fixed.

Yes, the firmware in metal gear boxes is definitely old and may cause trouble when connecting multiple firewire devices to a computer, and possibly in other situations.

But when it comes to problems with WD drives I would blame the drives. There are always problems with them.

Over time WD drives from different generatoins gathered around here and each generation has its quirk.

I had a similar problem with two Seagate 200 gb drives in a 2-bay FireWire case. I found the solution at http://fwdepot.com/thestore/newsdesk_info.php/newsdesk_id/49?osCsid=29 135549d81654212e90857f991b7b3e

Hope this helps