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[Falc]

Well, on the power side, unless it's a Solid State Drive, you should be able to tell phisically if it's working or not. It'll make some noise or if you hold it in your hand, especially while starting it up, you should be able to detect the moving parts inside.

[eerr]

... removing other peripherals, booting into safe mode, then plugging in the drive?


Does anything else work in those damn usb ports?


Are you connecting an american device to british power??


seriously bug your neighbor about testing the drive???

[Aqizzar]

Does anything else work in those damn usb ports?

Are you connecting an american device to british power??

I know it's standard practice to first assume anyone having technical difficulties is stone cold retarded, but I'd like to think we have more faith in each other around here.

I just tried something really smart.  3.0 is backcompat with 2.0, and 2.0 is backcompat with 1.0, but it's questionable whether you can go 3.0 > 1.0.  So I bought a 2.0 USB hub, for a 3.0 > 2.0 > 1.0 chain.  Didn't work.  Once again, I still don't know if the thing is actually working at all, but I'm still trying.

EDIT: Okay, I think the drive itself might be the problem.  Another computer didn't recognize it either.  Anyone know lenient Fry's return policy is?

[IronyOwl]

EDIT: Okay, I think the drive itself might be the problem.  Another computer didn't recognize it either.  Anyone know lenient Fry's return policy is?

Last I heard (years and years ago) they were seething wretches. No idea about the present.

[Aqizzar]

Well, I still have the packaging, and I... recovered the receipt, so it's just a matter of enduring the Returns line after Christmas.  At least I'm probably not out my money.

[Tellemurius]

have you tried disassemble the box and check the drive through ie. IDE or SATA ports? (make it internal...)

[Aqizzar]

have you tried disassemble the box and check the drive through ie. IDE or SATA ports? (make it internal...)

I'd rather try to exchange it for another one before I crack the thing open and start modding the tower itself.  Besides, I don't know how much more stuff this tower can accommodate, I don't even trust myself to move it around.

[eerr]

How much shit do you have stapled to it?

[eerr]

Does anything else work in those damn usb ports?

Are you connecting an american device to british power??

I know it's standard practice to first assume anyone having technical difficulties is stone cold retarded, but I'd like to think we have more faith in each other around here.

Tell that to the guy who plugged a phone cord into an ethernet port.

(you just did)

And I was talking about british power to be amusing.

Looks like you'll just have to get a refund on the damn thing, and buy a nice flash-drive.

[Hyndis]

Does it show up under disk management?

If you plug an HDD or SSD into a computer intending to use it as a secondary drive its not going to show up under My Computer. You need to format it and assign it a drive letter first.

[Aqizzar]

Problem has been rendered superfluous.  I went back to Fry's and exchanged it for another external HD.  Specifically, a Verbatim brand of no designation.  If anything, it's superior as being an extra half-terabyte, and USB 2.0 so there's no chance of compatibility problems. I had a moment of blind fury when it still didn't work, before I opened the manual and found out this model has a power-button cleverly molded into the body.  All works fine now, although it hums pretty loud and the cords are really short.

So, uh, thanks for the help that I invalidated anyway guys.

Okay, I've got new problems.  I want to install Steam on my external drive, so Steam will download games to that, but Steam won't install itself again with an installation already on the C: drive.  I can image this becoming a recurring issue, so anyone have a suggestion?  Will the computer always treat the external like a flashdrive, and hence probably not execute anything on it?

[eerr]

according to
http://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=172084

you can just move the, uh, game data folder?

Uninstall steam, then install it to the D-drive or whatever.

Also, it should work just fine from a flash.(with a large margin of extra space)

According to them, being lazy and just copy-pasting the folder works too, I don't know if that will cause any problems in the future.

Regardless, you just run from a different drive.


Now as for installing many programs to a different drive, I happen to know some highly-important path-data which will make installs use a certain drive by default.

run-cmd-set

set APPDATA D:\\some_location?
or, more likely,
set ProgramFiles D:\Program Files\

Unfortunately, changing many of these paths will probably break stuff you already use...

Maybe? I have no idea.

You'll have to play with it.

[Aqizzar]

Thanks for the tips.  The biggest problem I can identify now is just the speed of data transfer.  I wouldn't want to actually run anything from the flashdrive, because any information that has to be loaded from the harddrive (which is all of it for Steam games), has to squeeze through a USB 1.1 port.  I've already been transferring static data files to the external, and the transfer is not quick, not to mention all Explorer-based activities (like opening folders or reading file information) have a couple-second delay.  Games can be run from it, but I wouldn't try it with anything very chunky.

[SolarShado]

Thanks for the tips.  The biggest problem I can identify now is just the speed of data transfer.  I wouldn't want to actually run anything from the flashdrive, because any information that has to be loaded from the harddrive (which is all of it for Steam games), has to squeeze through a USB 1.1 port.  I've already been transferring static data files to the external, and the transfer is not quick, not to mention all Explorer-based activities (like opening folders or reading file information) have a couple-second delay.  Games can be run from it, but I wouldn't try it with anything very chunky.

you might want to learn a bit of command-line-fu, and copy the files that way. it's not too complicated and while it won't transfer any faster, it should keep explorer from lagging so.

[Aqizzar]

Eh, I know how to copy files via command line.  Since that would just be the fake-prompt included in post-98 Windows, I can't imagine it would actually make any difference.

Besides, the lag is barely there now, and I can just turn the drive on and off.