external case problem (unreliable?), please help

by rossdonnan Sep 3, 2005 8:29PM PDT

Hello there,

I am having a problem accessing my external hard drive. A few months ago I bought a new ritmo external 3.5" case. I bought a 250gig wd drive to use for portable storage on multiple computers in my household.

It worked for a while in my laptop then stopped working. I took the case back to the computer shop and the man informed me that those external drives arent really reliable with drives over 250gb. He sold me another case that was reliable. I took this home, installed the 250gb drive in the case and away I went. Awesome, it works perfectly. 2 days later, it said there was a problem with all data so I reformatted the drive. All good, I backed up the data the previous day (and its on another hard drive too).

It then worked again, and I restored all data. I was using it for a few hours today, restarted my computer to restore my wireless network and then it wasnt showing up in My computer as a drive.

I did some troubleshooting, checked through device manager and its all working fine, but just doesnt show up in My Computer. Tried it on my friends computer, but it said in the device manager that (windows has stopped this device because of a problem).

I am running Windows Xp sP2 with all updates installed on a sony vaio 2.6ghz p4 with 512mb ram (laptop).
its a 3.5" external case and I am using firewire connection

I would appreciate any help that you can give me.

ps. I also tried using USB connnection but the same problem occured.

Ok guys, bit of an update, I have just turned it on again and it works perfectly. I have a feeling or theory that maybe the drive gets too hot after a few hours and shuts down? Is this a good theory?

I need a reliable source for my data, eg. I cant be working on a design and the hard drive crashes etc.

Thanks for your help, let me know if anyone needs more information.

Discussion is locked

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Were you trying the firewire connection?

by r. proffitt Forum moderator Sep 3, 2005 10:04PM PDT

While there are those that will exclaim "it should work" my lesson in life is to use nothing but USB 2.0 on the PC and the firewire on the MAC. Then never deviate from which I use for fear of corrupting the filesystem.

Since you are moving it between machines, it is possible you are corrupting the filesystem and not finding a true failure.

Hope this helps.

Bob

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in reply

by rossdonnan Sep 6, 2005 12:58AM PDT

Hello Bob,

Thanks for the reply, I appreciate it.

By my understanding, I thought the definition of a portable hard drive was one that you can move from machine to machine without the files being corrupted.

I have tried it with a usb many times, but it says that the data has been corrupted about 20 minutes ago. Even after restarting the system and still having it on usb it doesnt work.

I saw a post earlier and formatting the drive in disk management, as a logical drive and not a primary drive. will this help at all?

I am going to reformat it asap, so what should I do to stop these problems happening?

ps. i was using a firewire connection, why do you say not to use firewire on the pc?

Cheers
Rossco

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My definition too.

by r. proffitt Forum moderator Sep 6, 2005 5:07AM PDT

"ps. i was using a firewire connection, why do you say not to use firewire on the pc?"

Because of far too many people bringing me corrupted volumes. But people keep trying. Yes, we all think it should work and wish it did, but so far...

Bob

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logical or primary partition

by rossdonnan Sep 6, 2005 10:48AM PDT

fair enough, thanks heaps for the advice bob

this morning the usb2.0 one seems to be working fine. weird.

one more question, should i use the disk management software to reformat the drive as a logical drive instead of a primary partition? could this help and what is the difference?

thanks again
rossco

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Keep it simple.

by r. proffitt Forum moderator Sep 6, 2005 11:09AM PDT

I use BASIC partitions and not DYNAMIC. The reason is simple. I want it to be what works in most systems including linux. In fact, there is an incompatibility between Windows 2000 and Windowx XP on some file systems. Microsoft documents it somewhere but no fix is planned since Windows 2000 is considered to be end of lifed.

If you need to move the drive around, don't get fancy.

Bob

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definition

by rossdonnan Sep 6, 2005 1:00PM PDT

idont know what basic or dynamic partitions are.

does that mean i should stay primary or make a logical drive? I will only be using it on this machine from now on as its too unreliable. any more problems and im tempted to take it back to the shop

thanks

would you also recommend formatting my machine? would a fresh insteall of xp help?

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As to formatting your machine...No. Here's why.

by r. proffitt Forum moderator Sep 6, 2005 9:40PM PDT

Let me be frank. About 2 in 10 understand that Microsoft understand the OS does install on the machine, but that leaves the drivers that Microsoft will usually fail since there are no standards to adher to.

My answer is if there is any doubt about how to install the OS, and finish up the install proper, then no. Don't do that.

As to definitions, let me share how I set up my last USB 2.0 hard disk. I used XP's Drive Management tool, created one partition then right clicked on it and formatted in NTFS since the volume was 160GB.

You may do as you wish, but we have dozens of these at the office and I don't get fancy.

Bob

external case problem (unreliable?), please help

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