Never used my USB ports - Installing new External Drive

This may be a strange question ....
Have (4x) USB 2.0 ports on my computer. Device Manager / Universal Serial Bus Controllers has 8 entries. All report "This device is working properly ". I have never used them because I have no USB devices. Santa is coming early and will be delivering a Maxtor 200GB External USB 2.0 Hard Drive . When I attach the drive / begin install, I'm not concerned if port is good/active or dead. Any chance I could damage the drive if the port is communicating, but incorrectly or weak signal?

 

Hello Dennis,
Since I am around (fast responses on this forum ).

I seriously doubt any damage could take place.

The listings in Device Manager should include the name of the chipset and the chipset model number to be the correct drivers.

"This device is working properly "...and I was the first person to step on the moon. I have about the same level of confidence in both statements.

Some VIA chipsets need special driver updates for USB. Find them at the download site at www.viaarena.com .

To make certain they are working correctly, find updated motherboard/chipset drivers.

Matt

 

Thanks Matman for the fast reply.
Will check out motherboard drivers. Never flashed a board.
Hope it's not heart a thumping experience.

 

Dennis, no, I do not mean a BIOS upgrade, I just mean to update the chipset drivers. The chipset drivers run under Windows. If you look through the list of hardware in Device Manager, they will be listed with the name of the chipset manufacturer, some of the better known chipset manufacturers are Intel, Via, nVidia and SIS.

A BIOS upgrade would "flash" a new BIOS instruction set to the CMOS (ROM) chip. These are the instructions used to start the computer...tell it what it is, where to find any hardware attached to the motherboard and identify the hardware ready to load that information for the operating system, which could be Windows, DOS, Linux or any number of commercial operating systems. A BIOS upgrade is not drivers.

The original motherboard/chipset drivers will be on the CD that came with your computer/motherboard. They are usually updated if the motherboard manufacturer is "supporting" that model and is keen to have return customers for their products.

If you can tell us the computer/motherboard manufacturer and the model number, we could help you find appropriate drivers.

A BIOS upgrade may actually help, if the upgrade deals with that part of the BIOS. BIOS upgrades have a "listing" of what each upgrade does. It will be listed at the computer/motherboard manufacturer's website.

Again, If you can tell us the computer/motherboard manufacturer and the model number, we could help you find appropriate drivers, unless you are keen to search "hardware info "

Matt

 

Syntax SV266AD Motherboard
This is my current board. Local builder did not furnish driver/CD for chipset.
Will be picking up external drive Friday. If you feel I won't do any damaged plugging in / installing drive, won't make any changes unless I have dead ports.
Once I get drive installed, if performance is not an issue, will probably sing the tune "If it's not broke, don't fix it !!
Thanks again Matt

 

This is the download page at Syntax:
http://www.syntaxgroups.com/support/downloads.php
The motherboard has USB 2.0, so it needs to have the USB drivers listed there installed.
I suggest downloading the other files (BIOS and the manual) as well and burn all of them onto a CD for safekeeping. In the future you may find that Syntax has removed the support (motherboards do not seem to be one of their main interests). Also save a copy of the link you posted, it seems to have more information about the motherboard than Syntax does and Tigerdirect may eventually remove that webpage.

The motherboard has a VIA KT266A chipset. It uses what VIA call the "retro" 4.1 drivers version 4.43:
http://www.viaarena.com/default.aspx?PageID=420&OSID=1&CatID=1070
Burn a copy of this file to your CD as well. These would be the best set of chipset drivers for your board.

Other drivers:
Audio and Ethernet(LAN):
http://www.viaarena.com/default.aspx?PageID=2&OSID=1
The USB drivers at VIA may be more up to date than the ones at Syntax.

These should all make quite a reasonable "motherboard drivers CD ". BTW, I could not open the motherboard manual, it has 3.1 in the title, maybe it means Word 3.1, my Word 2000 could not open it. I was able to read part of it using Wordpad.

For the USB to be functioning correctly, Device Manager will list ten items under USB controllers.
4 X Root Hubs
4 X VIA Tech #### PCI to USB host controller
USB 2.0 host controller
VIA PCI to USB enhanced host controller

It should show up like this once you install the Syntax USB drivers.

Drivers are such fun, aren't they?

Matt

 

Dennis L--Is there some reason why you expect problems? I would just follow Maxtor's installation instructions.
I suspect you will get a CD (possibly with drivers if you do not have WinXP), but primarily Maxtor's freebee backup program. Then plug the external drive's power cord and USB cable in as suggested by Maxtor. About the only other thing you may have to consider is whether you want the external drive formatted for FAT or NTFS. Again Maxtor should supply full instructions.
After installation, you also could visit Maxtor's site to see if there are any updated drivers.

 

Thanks so much Mattman for all the information. Will be all archive in a safe location. A definite rescue if/when this install goes south.
Welshjim ... Is there some reason why you expect problems? My concern was my +3 year old system has never had an attached USB device. Mattman assured me even if USB ports were half baked, they could not damage new drive during the install process.

INSTALL
Opened box, found hardware and (1x) 5" x 8" piece of paper labeled Quick Guide. Nothing to read, it only has pictures. (see the attached jpg). NO manual or installed disk ... hmmm, this could be interesting.
So I attached power to drive, attached USB cable from drive to computer.
XP prompts "Found New Hardware ", clicked on it, "Safely Remove Hardware" icon shows up in my system tray. Hmmm again, nothing could be this easy!!!??
Bring up Disk Management screen, and there sits my new Drive(G.), system stated as "Healthy and Active" (see attached jpg). Wow, must say, I'm impressed.

Question
As displayed in jpg, drive comes pre-configured as FAT32. Their could be occasions I would have a file (ISO's) that are 4GB plus in size. Is it much of a problem to change drive to NTFS. Will not write anything to disk until I hear a response.

Question
Never used an attached USB device. Drive has it's own power source. Before I shut computer down, do I / must I click on "Safely Remove Hardware" for this drive? Until I get my core backup data onto this drive, I would prefer to leave it attached to computer. After that, not sure how I will handle daily change, but incremental would be the preferred.

 

Dennis L--Glad to hear the good news. I really was not expecting problems.

No. That is only when you want to shut off the external drive while the PC is on. When you shut down the PC, you can shut off the Maxtor without concern. There is no reason to keep it running, and if you have WinXP you should be able to start it up whenever you want. The Maxtor should have a shut off/on switch so there is no need to disconnect, but shut off is fine.
NTFS vs. FAT32. WinXP works more efficiently with NTFS. Post back if you need detail.
P.S. I am really surprised Maxtor did not provide a backup program as part of the deal. My Western Digital external hard drive came with Dantz Retrospect. As far as I am concerned, better than Ghost--certainly much faster.
A little info on differential vs. incremental backup
http://www.backup4all.com/incremental_backup.php

 

Thanks for the input Welshjim. For backup program will probably continue with Syncback. Have been using the free version with impeccable results. Will upgrade to paid version ( SyncbackSE and Comprehensive list ) because it can manage backing up "active files ". The company is very generous in allowing paid version to be run on up to 5 computers.

No, mine did not come with such elaborate options.
Power off would require pulling plug ... think I'll have to visit Radio Shack for a 50 cent switch.

Maxtor only provides backup software in there upper end "OneTouch" family.

Would be most grateful.
Thanks.

 

Welshjim
I went into Maxtor Knowledge Base and used the Convert.exe to change drive from FAT32 to NTFS. Used following cmd line entry for Drive G: external drive ...
convert G: /fs:ntfs

Worked like a charm.
Thanks to the both of you for your support.

 

Dennis L--You are most welcome. Glad everything is working!!
BTW--If you try to use the external drive as a bootable drive, I would like to hear the results. As far as I know, most BIOS's, except for very new ones, do not permit this. So the external drive is primarily a storage drive.

 

Yeah, have accepted that. This is just a fast, automatic way for data backup. I have not crossed into "Image Backups ". Probably because I am not a fan of managing partitions. My next system will have a very fast, but small C drive (+-30GB / 50GB). System files and all applications will be stored on this drive. A second HD, very large (assuming in a year or two we will be talking Terabyte) will store the local/network Media files, and C drive(s) local/network backup images.