The bad just got badder. 1646

Thanks for your response.

I follow everything in your first two paragraphs.

I also understand what you are saying in your third paragraph about different model harddrives having different power requirement even within the 2.5" range. However in my case I am working with a universal USB case and I purchased an identical hard drive that is in my dell and put it into the USB case. So I do know what hard drive is in the case. And as I mentioned before the same USB drive works perfectly on another 600m drawing both the data and power from the USB ports. Therefore I must be OK with the power requirements with the USB hard drive.

In your last paragraph you mention the possibility of a software or configuration error. Anticipating that possibility, I also purchased another same brand hard drive that I carefully formatted and installed Windows and all the Dell drivers. I then swapped this second drive out with the original hard drive that came with the computer. Still the same error message pops up.

Wouldn't the use of the second drive in place of the original drive suggest a hardware rather than software problem?

BTW, I posted this problem on this list back last December when I first got the computer and discovered the problem. If I remember from the responses, no one could figure it out back then either. I spent a couple of weeks on and off trying to work with Dell support.

I am not really asking this group for help, as I have already been there and done that.

And I not sure that a dell tech or anyone else could figure it out unless they were in possession of the computer. And since I use it everyday I really can not afford to be without it.

Larry