Could u recommend a closeure for ide to usb that works with linux. I am using it as external storage spae as well as swap space. Prefably it should support firewire too.

Any one at all should work.

The hard disk will just appear as a usb/firewire mass storage device. Thats the great thing about usb + firewire. Its a standard and that standard is well supported in linux/mac/windows.

I've had no name brands and seagate enclosures attached to linux boxes and never had a problem with a single one.

You may find this interesting. A Daily Giz Wiz podcast episode, featuring a CompUSA Hard Drive enclosure.
http://aolradio.podcast.aol.com/twit/DGW-067.mp3

It's one of Leo Laporte's podcasts.
http://twit.tv/dgw1

I agree that any should work. I'm using a MadDog 5.25" that I got on sale at CompUSA and it's working fine. I've used two hard drives in it and a cd-rw works for reading. I suspect the issue with the cd-rw is the drive going bad and not fault of the enclosure.

ok I got my enclosure. But for some reason when I've connected it up linux creates a device file for the usb hdd but it doesn't have sda1 etc. Thats means it's not partitioned right? But fisk refuses to partition it . Instead it just sits there. I dont even get to the fdisk's menu driven interface. COuld it be the hdd is just dead because it is serveral yrs old. I dont know what ATA it is but it's a 4gb 5200 rpm but am not sure if it has partitions.

What device is it being given? What syntax are you using for the fdisk command? An old drive like that, depending on how heavily it's been used, or if it's been lying on a shelf unused for a while, could go bad. All it takes is a bad spot at sector 0 (the partition table, FAT, etc.). Do you know the brand? Maxtor, Western Digital, Seagate, etc. I've had some bad luck with Western Digital drives, but never any problems with Maxtor.

Just boot the machine, plug in the hard disk and run a dmesg.

It should tell you if the drive is detected and what letter it is being given.

If its detected but not assigned to a node like /dev/sda, you may need to load the usb-storage module. If your running a custom kernel, you'll also need the scsi disk (sd) and scsi generic (sg) modules loaded. If you using the mandrake kernel they will already be there.

4GB hard disk, that hasn't been used for years sounds a bit bad though. Sometimes the heads get stuck on olders disk when they are constantly used then get stoped for a while. You probably heard the stories of how tapping the back of old scsi disks used to fix them

dmesg should still give you output when the device is attached.

[ 37.419113] usbcore: registered new driver usbhid
[ 37.419116] drivers/usb/input/hid-core.c: v2.01:USB HID core driver
[ 59.467714] usb 2-2: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 4
[ 59.655382] usb-storage: device found at 4
[ 59.655386] usb-storage: waiting for device to settle before scanning
[ 59.655398] usbcore: registered new driver usb-storage
[ 138.717437] usb 2-2: reset high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 4
[ 212.849683] usb 2-2: reset high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 4
[ 286.980928] usb 2-2: reset high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 4
[ 361.113176] usb 2-2: reset high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 4

[ 435.319626] end_request: I/O error, dev sdc, sector 0

[ 64.658185] SCSI device sdc: 6306048 512-byte hdwr sectors (3229 MB)
[ 64.658192] sdc: assuming drive cache: write through
[ 64.661142] SCSI device sdc: 6306048 512-byte hdwr sectors (3229 MB)
[ 64.661148] sdc: assuming drive cache: write through
[ 435.319626] end_request: I/O error, dev sdc, sector 0
[ 435.319631] Buffer I/O error on device sdc, logical block 0


usbstoreage but i cant see anything with the name of my hard drive (quantum fireball)
But when I plugged it in as ide on a different pc it attempted to boot up windows but failed with NTDLR missing. But i think thats because windows corrupted on me. So that means it has a partition doesn't it

In windows it doesn't come up within my computer but is detected.

Good news and bad news from that dmesg.

Good news.
Your enclosures is picked up as a usb2 storage device. Same as in windows. Your disk is called sdc according to that dmesg so /dev/sdc.

Bad news.
As soon as it picks up the disk it gets and IO error on the first block of the disk. This is probably why it doesn't show up in windows either. It appears the head of the disk just is not moving, either the servo is broke or stuck.

Solutions.
1. Try to format the disk in windows or linux (may hang the system if the disk is really bad)
2. The enclosure is good but the disk is bad, put another disk in.

I've seen about 1000 failed hard disks over the last 5 years and this sounds like number 1001.

Well o know why now i actually managed to snap one of the pins oops. thanks anyways. It worked with a different drive