Grr! Plug'n PLay and other lies!

[webado]

So I finally got an external HD delivered. Yay!

Plug'n Play it says. Pre-formatted as FAT32 it says, no need to format again unless we want to for something specific. Good.

It says: plug it in power source and usb cable into usb port on computer, turn on drive and turn on computer and it will recognize it and you're set.

Oh, ok. Sure, it said "new device" - and then .... nothing. Can't find it amongst my drives. In Device manager you see it.... unformatted, unpartitioned, inaccessible.

Oh, ok, bummer, so I'll format it since they lied. No go. The option is not available.

Finally I had to plug into another computer running XP where we could format it. So next I will try again on mine (W 2K) and see how it goes. Stand by for part deux of the continuing saga of Plug 'n Play Lies.

[Sharron]

I sure wish I could help. but alas I am a lowly non-geek. I would just call the manufacturer and yelled at them of the phone!

[webado]

He-he! That's next on my list of "todo" stuff.

Right now I'm copying my internal HD to the external one. The time estimate for just the first 30GB partition is about 4 hours. I hope it's wrong. The other partition which has about 80GB will be proportional? I hope not!

This was suppsoed to be a fast external drive too - or so they say. Of course, I have a lot of junk, but never much inclination of cleaning it up in any sustained effort. I just forever put it off for later.

[Sharron]

I did buy an 80 gig external seagate hard drive, plug and play. It is a Fat32 drive and my lap top hard drive is 40 gig NTFS. I had no problms. Just plugged it in and it worked. Didn't do another thing to it except fill it up. lol

I am using XP,

[webado]

Yes, mine should have been this easy. But the truth was that it wasn't formatted at all - so they lied. Oh, wait, it didn't have a partition on it, that's what my son says was the problem - so it wasn't accessible using any drive letter.

I was supposed to be formatted FAT32 - but since we had to refromat just in roder to have a partition, we formatetd NTFS (the only option on my son's computer for that - mine didn't want to do it at all).

I find it's very slow . I don't know of any way to check if my USB port is 2.0 or 1.1 - my son says it's 2.0 and that should be like 400 times faster than 1.1 I suspect it's not that though. How can it take 4 hours to transfer 30GB?

[Sharron]

I do believe that if I plug my external drive into a usb port on my old old old desktop, it gives me a warning about pluggin in a high speed external device into a non high speed port. Or it says something like that. It work though.

My son's high speed external drive (Sony) would not work at all on the same desktop.

Mere seconds later: I was under the impression that you didn't have to have a partition on a external drive unless you were going to install an operating system on it.


again: I looked at my f drives properties, it does not show a partition at all.

[paulzon]

Hi Christina!

Originally Posted by chrisooc

I find it's very slow . I don't know of any way to check if my USB port is 2.0 or 1.1 - my son says it's 2.0 and that should be like 400 times faster than 1.1 I suspect it's not that though. How can it take 4 hours to transfer 30GB?

Try (for XP/2000) Device Manager, click the + next to Universal Serial Bus controllers, if there is USB 2.0 Enhanced Open Host Controller there then you have USB 2.0. ... Not totally sure about this though.

USB 2.0 should be 40 times faster, and take alot less than 4 hrs to transfer 30 Gig (I think)

However, I think that the best "technical" solution to your problem would be...

a) Take it back to the shop.
b) Ram it right up the assistants you know what!
c) Demand your money back!

ah! you had it delivered! (sorry) ... er send it back then.

After all, if it has started off like that, who knows how it will behave later on!

Paul (www.zonicweb.net)
Museum Of Bad Album Covers

[hiwayracer]

You need 2 have service pack 2 installed inorder for USB 2 to be active even though the actual drive might be usb 2.

Also you never mentioned what size the disk is in total, note that only XP (not even win 2000) can work with drives over 160 Gigs

[webado]

It's a 160GB external drive, to which I'm copying a 120HB drive (2 partitions).

My pc is currently running W 2K, so if usb 2 needs Xp (let alone SP2) well, then I'm only on usb 1.1

I'm now copying the second larger partition - maybe 70GB (ok, I think it's 50Gb used out of it). It hasn't even started telling me how long it's going to be. I expect all night.

Paul, I have no time now to monkey with this. I'm off next Wednesday for vacation and I have a few more hundred details to attend to.

40 times or 400 times faster than usb 1.1... bah! Same thing. I don't think I'm getting either. of cousre I have no idea how fast usb 1.1 should be either - a week?


The HD came with an installtion disk for USB 2.0 drivers only for W98 & ME. Instructions said that W 2K and XP already have all that, and if the USB port is already 2.0 it will work as such. Are they lying? probably.
I think my USB port is 2.0, my son said that's what he put in last pc reconstruction (oh, yes, this is one of those constantly morphing pc's). Don't feel like investigating, in any case, it is what it is. The msytery will eventually be solved.

I'm thinking my original disk is probably quite fragmented anyway. And I know it's got lots of faults, which is why I'm doing all this. Can't afford to keep it much longer .