| Hard drive question! |
I just got a 1 tb external hard drive(my book brand)I already have a 150(almost full) in use via USB can I add that second one via Usb also or do I need to get rid of the 150 one..I guess the question is can I use more than one external drive.Also is 1 Tb to straining on the processor(mine is not that strong) for making music?
Marino - you can use as many USB drives as you have USB ports (and if you have a powered hub, then you can have even more). The processor doesn't struggle with where information is stored, and you won't have any problem with the 1Tb size (as data referencing is handled by circuits on the HDD) but it would lag a little if you were trying to simultaneously read and write to different drives.
Funny in'it.......
I had the same thing last week, I bought a 250gb external drive and tried it with the other one I already had in there, I sat and watched as Windows tried it hardest to figure it out, displaying a drive icon in explorer then taking it away, then displaying it again etc , clicking continuously.
I thought it might be that the letters (g: , h: , i: ) I had given the portable hd's and their partitions were clashing, so I changed them , but this did not help either. so as far as I know now the answer is no ... or yes ... you cant have them plugged in at the same time.
..........but this is unacceptable !!! not in this day and age...a search is necessary !
Your processors should just see the HD as space, it's when you've got all those extra programs going on in the background that your processor will start to complain , like trojans and things !!
DOS Fdisk would warn that it could not deal with large hard drives, but that was dos.
I had the same thing last week, I bought a 250gb external drive and tried it with the other one I already had in there, I sat and watched as Windows tried it hardest to figure it out, displaying a drive icon in explorer then taking it away, then displaying it again etc , clicking continuously.
I thought it might be that the letters (g: , h: , i: ) I had given the portable hd's and their partitions were clashing, so I changed them , but this did not help either. so as far as I know now the answer is no ... or yes ... you cant have them plugged in at the same time.
..........but this is unacceptable !!! not in this day and age...a search is necessary !
Your processors should just see the HD as space, it's when you've got all those extra programs going on in the background that your processor will start to complain , like trojans and things !!
DOS Fdisk would warn that it could not deal with large hard drives, but that was dos.
Jiminuk wrote…
Marino - you can use as many USB drives as you have USB ports (and if you have a powered hub, then you can have even more). The processor doesn't struggle with where information is stored, and you won't have any problem with the 1Tb size (as data referencing is handled by circuits on the HDD) but it would lag a little if you were trying to simultaneously read and write to different drives.
:)
Please explain Jim, I'd love to get the 3 I have plugged in together, but I keep on getting the problem I described above !!! My Windows finds the 'new' one but cant seam to 'hold on' to it.
Kings, that's very odd indeed. I have 2 external HD drives (both 250Gb), 2 internal HD (1 80Gb, 1 160Gb), and 2 internal DVD r/w drives on a pretty old pc (don't remember the motherboard, but it's got an AMD 1.2GHz Athalon processor and 1GB internal memory) that has 4 USB ports. The PC is running Windows XP SP3.
I get the following in Explorer: C: (Hard drive 1), D: (Hard drive 2), E: (DVD 1), F: (DVD 2), G: (USB Drive 1), H: (USB Drive 2).
I've made no changes to the system - just plugged it all in, and got what I expected.
When I want to put music on my (now old) MP3 player, I unplug an external HDD and plug in the MP3 via USB. It's also seen as an external drive as H: (and so is my camera when plugged in).
So I can explain it - sorry!!!
I get the following in Explorer: C: (Hard drive 1), D: (Hard drive 2), E: (DVD 1), F: (DVD 2), G: (USB Drive 1), H: (USB Drive 2).
I've made no changes to the system - just plugged it all in, and got what I expected.
When I want to put music on my (now old) MP3 player, I unplug an external HDD and plug in the MP3 via USB. It's also seen as an external drive as H: (and so is my camera when plugged in).
So I can explain it - sorry!!!
Jiminuk wrote…
Kings, that's very odd indeed. I have 2 external HD drives (both 250Gb), 2 internal HD (1 80Gb, 1 160Gb), and 2 internal DVD r/w drives on a pretty old pc (don't remember the motherboard, but it's got an AMD 1.2GHz Athalon processor and 1GB internal memory) that has 4 USB ports. The PC is running Windows XP SP3.
I get the following in Explorer: C: (Hard drive 1), D: (Hard drive 2), E: (DVD 1), F: (DVD 2), G: (USB Drive 1), H: (USB Drive 2).
I've made no changes to the system - just plugged it all in, and got what I expected.
When I want to put music on my (now old) MP3 player, I unplug an external HDD and plug in the MP3 via USB. It's also seen as an external drive as H: (and so is my camera when plugged in).
So I can explain it - sorry!!!
It could be because I'm still on SP2, I have a 'tweaked version' of Windows. I need to upgrade I suppose.
You've confirmed that it should just work and mine doesn't so I'll have to go after a solution.
Cheers Jim
OK, I was puzzled by Kings problem on this so I asked at work today. The best answer (from our IT people) is.......
If the motherboard has 2 separate USB hubs and each drive is plugged into a different one, then they will both be recognised and can be accessed without issue. However, if there is a single internal USB hub, or if two HDDs are plugged into the same hub (remember that a hub can drive 4 USB ports no problem) then the PC will not be able to see either. This is because both drives need to be kept open and active to work, and a single hub continuously switches between the two.
In my case, I was just lucky that I have two USB hubs on the motherboard, and I happen to chose 2 different ones from the ports at the back (also, I looked and it has 6 USB ports, 4 at the back and 2 at the front; the 2 at the front come off different hubs)!
Oh, and there will be a drop in performance if you're reading and writing to both HDDs.
Hope that makes sense!!!
Jim A
If the motherboard has 2 separate USB hubs and each drive is plugged into a different one, then they will both be recognised and can be accessed without issue. However, if there is a single internal USB hub, or if two HDDs are plugged into the same hub (remember that a hub can drive 4 USB ports no problem) then the PC will not be able to see either. This is because both drives need to be kept open and active to work, and a single hub continuously switches between the two.
In my case, I was just lucky that I have two USB hubs on the motherboard, and I happen to chose 2 different ones from the ports at the back (also, I looked and it has 6 USB ports, 4 at the back and 2 at the front; the 2 at the front come off different hubs)!
Oh, and there will be a drop in performance if you're reading and writing to both HDDs.
Hope that makes sense!!!
Jim A
Jiminuk wrote…
OK, I was puzzled by Kings problem on this so I asked at work today. The best answer (from our IT people) is.......
If the motherboard has 2 separate USB hubs and each drive is plugged into a different one, then they will both be recognised and can be accessed without issue. However, if there is a single internal USB hub, or if two HDDs are plugged into the same hub (remember that a hub can drive 4 USB ports no problem) then the PC will not be able to see either. This is because both drives need to be kept open and active to work, and a single hub continuously switches between the two.
In my case, I was just lucky that I have two USB hubs on the motherboard, and I happen to chose 2 different ones from the ports at the back (also, I looked and it has 6 USB ports, 4 at the back and 2 at the front; the 2 at the front come off different hubs)!
Oh, and there will be a drop in performance if you're reading and writing to both HDDs.
Hope that makes sense!!!
Jim A
Let me just check it out........
Hmm....Jim...Tell your colleges that I'm SO grateful that they are such geeks !!!!!
And here's a crate of beer for the boys....
CHEERS....yes I now have both working...O! And cheers M for the thread !!!!
Sweet External is so nice, since you can bring it anywhere you want at the drop of a hat.
I would definitely recommend not installing programs to the 1tb drive. Programs usually communicate with the drive a whole lot, and that's kind of rough on it when it has to go all the way out to the external drive.
When I used a backup external drive, I would always copy my current project to my main harddrive, work work work, and then when I was done, it went into the "vault" external drive. It's up to you of course, but I think that external drives make better storage for your general files (video, music, random documents, etc) than for installing programs to it.
Glad to see you guys got your drives working. As for drive letters, I usually don't give drives a specific letter that they *have* to use, otherwise you sometimes get 2 of them trying to use the same letter. If you don't know if you gave it a specific letter or not, you probably didn't, and so all is well
External is so nice, since you can bring it anywhere you want at the drop of a hat.I would definitely recommend not installing programs to the 1tb drive. Programs usually communicate with the drive a whole lot, and that's kind of rough on it when it has to go all the way out to the external drive.
When I used a backup external drive, I would always copy my current project to my main harddrive, work work work, and then when I was done, it went into the "vault" external drive. It's up to you of course, but I think that external drives make better storage for your general files (video, music, random documents, etc) than for installing programs to it.
Glad to see you guys got your drives working. As for drive letters, I usually don't give drives a specific letter that they *have* to use, otherwise you sometimes get 2 of them trying to use the same letter. If you don't know if you gave it a specific letter or not, you probably didn't, and so all is well
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