Background

I had an Ikebana Fireblaster USB 2.0 120GB external hard drive that served me well for about 4 years. I didn't really have a use for it for some time and left it in its carrying case in my office closet. About a month before creating this page I decided to use it for something and discovered it was not working properly. My PC (running XP SP2) would recognize that a USB device had been connected to the machine, but it would not show up in My Computer or in Disk Management (in Computer Management).

There wasn't really anything critical on the drive, but I was curious to know if it was the drive that went bad or if it was the Ikebana hardware that went bad. I disassemebled the drive casing and removed the hard drive inside. I connected the drive to my PC via an IDE-to-USB adapter I had. The drive was smoked. I even went so far as to throw it in an old PC I had and tried to run SpinRite on it - no dice.

So now I've got this perfectly good USB 2.0 external drive housing with no hard drive in it. I had some extra IDE drives laying around and decided to try my luck at replacing the bad drive with a newer, bigger drive. I'm happy to say that I've now got a fully functional 250GB USB 2.0 external hard drive.

Why did you create this page?

Since the time my drive stopped working the Ikebana website has been down. I don't know what the status of the company is, but that avenue for support or help was non-existant. In addition, I couldn't find any other web pages that described in detail what you needed to do in order to trouble-shoot or diagnose a problem with this particular device. So it's my sincere hope that anyone else experiencing a problem with their Ikebana USB 2.0 external drive my find these pages helpful in helping them replace the hard drive in their housing.

Warning

Use these instructions at your own risk. You don't need a degree in engineering to take the drive apart, but use a little common sense when you're taking it apart.

What's that rattling noise?

From the day my Ikebana 120 drive arrived in the mail there had been something rattling around inside it. My buddy Kurt had purchased an Ikebana 60 several months before I ordered mine and when I mentioned the rattling to him he said he'd experienced the same thing (after dropping his). So for all you Ikebana owners that have finally decided to search for an explanation to the rattling noise inside your Ikebana drive, here it is:

hot glue on braided wires		loose hot glue dollups

It's hunks of hot glue that have fallen off the top of the drive housing. The manufacturer used hot glue to secure the wires that light up the Ikebana logo on the top of the housing and due to temperature change or impact (Kurt) they've managed to come loose from their respective adhesion points.