Forum Home
Press F1
Thread ID: 81084	2007-07-15 11:39:00	External USB selection & Installaton Win XP	Advocar (1098)	Press F1

Post ID	Timestamp	Content	User
569262	2007-07-15 11:39:00	Hi Team, My 6yr old Pc has Win XP Pro and USB 1 . 0 I wish to provide a seperate backup USB removeable hard drive . I have used a rack setup but it requires each PC to have an identical rack . Not very user friendly and windows doesnot like you removing / replacing HD, as it thinks you have a disk problem . I use USB for my camera with no issues so think USB HD should be OK? My existing PC cannot see an unformatted Hard drive over approx 40 gig . If I format it ito say 6 10gig partitions . Can read and write Ok Q 1) If I fit 2 . 0 USB card or later, and then add an external HD > 40gig say 200gig I will still need to format it as above . IE Partitions < than 40gig? Q 2) Does the external USB box need to use an IDE HD the same as my PC or can they use later version / type . Q 3) Is it better to use external power supply type to ensure HD doesnot create a power supply issue to USB ports? Q 4) Does win XP and USB HD allow for easy / Hot USB HD unpluging or do you need to turn it Off on the trask bar first before removing? Q 5) What are the pitfalls in USB HD use / setup? Q 6) Are the drives noisey? My removable drives have fans that are quite loud	Advocar (1098)
569263	2007-07-15 13:20:00	What OS are your other machines? You should be able to format it as one great big FAT32 or NTFS partition. I'd recommend just the one partition if its for backups, keeps things easy. Add a USB2.0 card, makes things _tons_ faster. Seriously you'll cry when you first try and backup 50-60GB via USB1.0 (which is 1,200KB/s, not to be confused with USB 1.1 which is 10x faster) Depending on the external caddy you get, it'll have to use either SATA or IDE. If you're using a 3.5" HDD, chances are you're going to have to use an external power-supply. I doubt that even if you were using an external laptop HDD / caddy that USB 1.0 would be able to power it if you've got something else hooked up, it might, but yeah... again its gonna be slow as heck :( Yeah its dead simple, just left-click on the icon near your clock and click "Eject USB HDD F:", Wait for about 2-10 seconds and it'll popup and tell you its not safe to be unplugged Pitfalls? Well its removable so it can be easy to forget about it. If you're using anything other than USB2.0 then its gonna be slow as so you'll loathe doing it... otherwise I like it and think its good :) Most are pretty quite that Ive used, except this one where I accidentally jammed a screwdriver in the fan and it chopped one of the blades off meaning that it never quite sat right, it made a horrible noise. That was my doing though. Get one of the 2.5" Laptop HDD's if you're really worried, Ive never seen one of those with a fan so it'll just be the HDD noise itself which is very minimal. Hope this helps Chill.	Chilling_Silence (9)
569264	2007-07-15 19:08:00	If your PC is only 6 yr old it should read a bigger hard drive than that. It might need a bios upgrade but at that age it should not even need that to read an 80gb drive or even a 250gb. Have you tried FDisk on a boot floppy to set a partition? You will probably have to use FDisk and get the HDD set up first with a partition and you can format it if you have format on your boot floppy. You can get a boot disk from bootdisk.com or create one and make sure you copy format.com and fdisk.com onto it. You may have to download fdisk if you don't have it there its not hard to find on the net. No problem fitting an extra USB 2 card. If you get an external USB HDD use one with external power supply, a usb powered one has limitations on HDD size/speed I have 2 externals here and they are both ok, one firewire and the other usb 2 I don't use them often but when i do they seem ok but nowhere as fast as my HDD's running off the IDE or SATA cables.	Bantu (52)
1