USB External hard drive

Today I purchased a Western Digital USB External hard drive.

I plugged it in and IMMEDIATELY XP recognized it and even though no request was made, I rebooted my computer. Well!! All I got was a black screen where the only option I had was to hit "Del" to go into the Bios area. That was not an option I wanted so I unplugged the drive and when I re-started the PC it went right into Windows as it usually does.

I then plugged the drive back in and it was still recognized. I went to the Western Digital site and attempted to e-mail them for support. That sent me to their Knowledge Base and an article that addressed this issue. Plus it gave me Microsoft links and after printing all off and reading them I once again restarted the PC without the drive connected and took a look at the Bios settings. I saw nothing referencing anything about USB drives.

I am NOT literate enough to deal with the Bios or XP work arounds so before I took it back to Circuit City I copied some files from my C drive to the USB drive. It took some time, which is no problem for me, but after all that time there ended up being very little there.

I tried to copy the entire Documents and Settings folder but when I kept getting error messages about certain files being in use, I gave up. I then thought I was copying my user folder and since there were no errors I thought all was fine. After all was complete I checked the folder (Pat) and all that was there were two files with the "trace" extension and containing only 1KB of info.

Two of the original files that I could NOT copy were NTUSER and SYMLSYS.


Thanks.

 

If certain files are in use by windows you may get errors when you try to copy/move or delete. I'd suggest not trying to copy a whole folder, but only the data you wish to copy within that folder. Copy the data to a different named folder on the external drive.

You probably don't want to be copying Windows system folders and files seperately, only your data for backup/archiving and programme updates, install programmes and driver updates. System folder would best be backed up using system backup software where the WHOLE system is backed up as one.


I have an external Maxtor One touch drive. These drives will be automatically detected by W2K, XP and W2K3, so require no additional drivers to be installed. After the initial detection and install of the drive, subsequent detection will be quick. I chose not to install any of the software that came with the drive as for my purpose I only want to drag files to the drive for backup or use a third party backup programme like Acronis True Image for full system backups.

A word of warning... Before shutting the PC down click on the hardware icon in the taskbar and then click Stop and then OK for the message that you can safely unplug the drive. Physically unplug the drive THEN shutdown or reboot. I believe your WD drive has a similar warning about possible data loss or drive failure if you DON'T uninstall and disconnect the drive before shutdown or reboot. There is only a very small chance of a problem if you don't follow this procedure, but they are expensive enough that I don't want to have a problem or loose any backup data.

For some reason these drives, like USB sticks don't have very good "front end" protection against spikes etc from the PC if not uninstalled properly before shutdown or reboot.

 

Thanks for the good advice.

I just thought I had read somewhere that you SHOULD back up your Documents and Settings folder.

Do you have any idea what .trace files are? I searched the Internet and found nothing or any sort of explanation that I could understand.

 

Likewise?

 

Windows Installation on External HD

Is there anyway that you can install the Windows XP OS onto an external hard drive without having windows installed on the internal one? Its for a laptop, and the internal one is fried.

 

That's something that I wouldn't even begin to know about. I'm just a little on the dense side. <G>

Perhaps someone else here could answer your question.

Sorry.

 

The only "trace" files I ever heard of were from Microsoft Bootvis program.

I had some on my computer and could not delete them until I reinstalled Bootvis and was able to delete them then.

I don't remember exactly but the file name had the word "TRACE" and "DRIVERS" and" _1_.bin ".

 

Can't see why not, as long as the USB drive is "seen" from the install disk at time of installation. Understand that you won't be able to connect it to another PC and have your own "portable Windows" though.

You may need to ensure the existing crook drive is disabled in the laptops BIOS as well.

If the laptop and/or external drive is only USB 1.1 then it's going to be very slow though. But with USB2 or firewire then you probably won't notice any difference, and may in fact be faster if the external drive is a 7200 spin drive, as many laptop HD's are 4200 or 5400 spin.

 

I just bought an external hard drive, and I am tickled with it. One thing I did find out is that USB2 is often only supported on the REAR USB ports, and the front ones won't work.

You could install Windows on the external hd, but if the point is simply data recovery, you shouldn't need to. I wouldn't back up Doc & Settings (maybe cookies & history, but why?) but I would back up "My Documents" and any other data files- like WAB (Windows Address Book) dbx files (OE's messages), etc. If the main comp is "fried ", you don't want to carry errors over to a new install, and you don't want any Windows System files on the EX HD.

I recovered all the data from my "old" comp (including 20 gigs of MP3s) and then transferred it to my "new" one, then reformatted the old HD and am now using the old hd for storage and back up. At some point I will use the "old" HD in a new computer built of various extra parts, and the ex hd will pay for itself rescuing data for others. I liked the fact that no software was required for XP to recognize and use the ex hd, and that it was so doggone EASY.

Paul made a very good point about properly disconnecting the ex hd.

Johanna

 

I took out the internal hard drive and it still wouldn't recognize the external one. Then i hit F6 at windows setup to install a third party controller, and it asked me for the driver disk in floppy format, which I didn't have, just the drivers on a cd. So I am resorting to buying just a cheap internal hard drive big enough for the OS and using the external once its all working.