USB drive enclosure not recognized after installing OS with Flashboot  

I have a portable SATA drive enclosure from OWC (their cheap SATA to USB 3 enclosure). On my old 7th generation i3 computer (with native support for Windows 7), it "just works" with no need to ever install drivers, and Device manager says it's a "Jmicron Tech USB device" with hardware ID "DiskJMicron_Tech___0214"

On the 9th generation i5 UEFI-only computer that I am trying to get working, I've installed Windows 7 successfully using Flashboot Pro. All the USB ports work fine with flash drives, my keyboard, mouse, etc. The drivers for the chipset I found complain about not being signed, but otherwise install fine, and I have a fully working system except for one thing.

The OWC external drive enclosure (which I use as my backup drive, without this I have no realistic way to transfer my data to the new machine) does not work. Windows makes the "device not working" error sound and device manager shows it with the yellow "lacking drivers" exclamation mark.

(I can't inject alternative drivers before installing Windows because every time I try that, whether it's with Flashboot's interface or using NTlite to inject drivers into the ISO, I get a flash drive that crashes on the windows splash screen).

I guess the "universal" usb 3 drivers that Flashboot injects aren't actually all that universal, but I am not at all sure where I need to go to find better drivers that I can install using "have disk" in device manager.

I tried plugging in a different USB to SATA gadget (one of those 3 way PATA/SATA universal adapter things), and it worked instantly, but I don't want to have to buy a new enclosure for my backup drive, and I especially don't want, months or years from now, to suddenly discover that some other device I need to use with the computer mysteriously won't work.

(I emailed Flashboot's support, and have not gotten any response.)

What is the model number for the OWC enclosure? They make a number of different enclosures. Is the enclosure powered by the USB cable or does it have an AC adapter? If it is USB powered then it might be marginal or not work if the USB port does not have enough power.

MisterEd said:

What is the model number for the OWC enclosure? They make a number of different enclosures. Is the enclosure powered by the USB cable or does it have an AC adapter? If it is USB powered then it might be marginal or not work if the USB port does not have enough power.

It's an OWC express, bus powered usb 3.0 enclosure for 2.5" drives. No power cable, no second USB cable needed. Just plug the one cable in and it works... except on this new computer, trying to install it with the USB drivers supplied by flashboot.

I checked, and the enclosure works fine on the new pc using Windows 10, it's definitely a driver issue rather than a hardware issue.

MisterEd said:

Not necessarily true. I have a number of drive enclosures including a 2.5" SATA one. One time one laptop stopped connecting with it. I then plugged a USB hub (with AC adapter) into the laptop. I then plugged the enclosure into the hub. The drive in its enclosure then worked fine. That proved it was a power problem with the USB ports on that computer. Note this was the only computer that had this problem.
Is it possible that the USB ports are using a default Windows supplied driver? Does the 9th generation computer even have Windows 7 drivers? If you look at the Device Manager does everything seem to be working properly?

I thought I already said: The exact same computer, the exact same drive, plugged into the exact same ports, work fine if I install Windows 10. And the drive works perfectly on the one generation older model of the same computer (with native Win 7 support), as well as on every other computer I have ever plugged it into (which would be *several*).

But the newer model, with 7 installed using flashboot (instead of the win 10 it shipped with), then the external drive does not work. Flashboot is screwing the pooch somehow. Which is a shame because I paid for the darn thing, and the alternatives for getting this UEFI only machine to work with 7 do not sound very user friendly.

SIW2 said:

Are we playing guess the pc?

What is the version of the drivers your third party program installed ?

The new PC is a Fujitsu Esprimo q558.

The USB drivers that flashboot provides are from Microsoft, dated 5/1/2018, version 6.2.9200.22453. Which ought to work, but somehow, for this one particular enclosure, are not.