external drive question

[Debbie Graham]

I don't know too much about them but I just got one and was wondering if you
could only store files on it or actually install a program on them? Right
now I'm using it for storing my larger videos on and pictures. Thanks

Debbie

 

[Terry R.]

The date and time was Thursday, January 15, 2009 10:40:49 AM, and on a
whim, Debbie Graham pounded out on the keyboard:

I don't know too much about them but I just got one and was wondering if you
could only store files on it or actually install a program on them? Right
now I'm using it for storing my larger videos on and pictures. Thanks

Debbie

Hi Debbie,

While you could install programs on them, that would mean the drive
would always have to be running. If you unplug the drive and plug it
into a different USB port, the drive letter could change, which would
break the registry entries and shortcuts.

Some programs happily run in their install folder with no registry
entries, but it takes more knowledge to know which ones do that.

I don't recommend leaving an external drive plugged in and running all
the time, unless the enclosure was designed for it. I've had too many
clients burn out drives that were running constantly and heat caused
them to prematurely fail on every one of them.

I use my 3 external drives for backups. Plug them in, back up, turn
them off. Of course I have 3 internal drives also and my data is backed
up to a different internal drive each day on shutdown.

--
Terry R.

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[Twayne]

I don't know too much about them but I just got

one and was wondering
if you could only store files on it or actually
install a program on
them? Right now I'm using it for storing my
larger videos on and
pictures. Thanks
Debbie

You can store anything you want on an external
drive, including installing programs if you wish
to; it's just another drive to the system.
Since, technically, part of the program and
references to it will still go to the C drive of
necessity, and the possible bottleneck of the
external drive interface, you could experience
slowdowns running a program installed on it, but
that's about all. Best thing to do is try it and
see what happens. If you don't like the way it
runs, just uninstall it.

It's completely up to you of course, but external
drives are normally used for storing backups of
the computer on. But, you can do about anything
you want to on them. My sister uses one as an
extension of her system to install programs to
rather than have to add a bigger hard drive: The
external drive was on sale and a lot cheaper than
an internal drive at the time. She has no
problems at all with it, but of course ymmv.
I've noticed that my BIOS would even allow me
to boot from one if I wanted to. Never tried to
use it that way though; doesn't make sense to me,
but than again, that's just my own opinion.

Regards,

Twayne

 

[Daave]

I don't know too much about them but I just got one and was wondering
if you could only store files on it or actually install a program on
them? Right now I'm using it for storing my larger videos on and
pictures. Thanks

Unless it's a bootable eSATA drive (as is usually the case), then the
answer is no.

What you should also be doing is making regular backups of the *entire*
system. You can use an imaging program like Acronis True Image to do
this. The external hard drive is an excellent medium to store your hard
drive image archives on.

 

[Terry R.]

The date and time was Thursday, January 15, 2009 10:54:01 AM, and on a
whim, Daave pounded out on the keyboard:

Unless it's a bootable eSATA drive (as is usually the case), then the
answer is no.

What you should also be doing is making regular backups of the *entire*
system. You can use an imaging program like Acronis True Image to do
this. The external hard drive is an excellent medium to store your hard
drive image archives on.

Hi Daave,

The drive doesn't need to boot to run a program from it, UNLESS that
program is Windows.

--
Terry R.

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[Debbie Graham]

I got the Seagate Free Agent Desk and it doesn't say anything about
unplugging it, it does however have a power saving mode.

Debbie

 

[Terry R.]

The date and time was Thursday, January 15, 2009 3:01:00 PM, and on a
whim, Debbie Graham pounded out on the keyboard:

I got the Seagate Free Agent Desk and it doesn't say anything about
unplugging it, it does however have a power saving mode.

Debbie

Debbie,

It is always good to quote the message you are replying to. I have no
idea who you responded to.

I doubt they would. But typically external drives aren't meant to run
all the time, unless they're network drives that were designed for it,
and cost more.

--
Terry R.

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[Daave]

The date and time was Thursday, January 15, 2009 10:54:01 AM, and on a
whim, Daave pounded out on the keyboard:


Hi Daave,

The drive doesn't need to boot to run a program from it, UNLESS that
program is Windows.

If Windows is on the PC's hard drive (C, and a program is installed to
an external hard drive, I would imagine that would be messy. Have you
tried that? If it can be done, then I retract my statement. But even if
it could be done, I wouldn't recommend it. But it is interesting,
nonetheless.

 

[Terry R.]

The date and time was Thursday, January 15, 2009 3:16:52 PM, and on a
whim, Daave pounded out on the keyboard:

If Windows is on the PC's hard drive (C, and a program is installed to
an external hard drive, I would imagine that would be messy. Have you
tried that? If it can be done, then I retract my statement. But even if
it could be done, I wouldn't recommend it. But it is interesting,
nonetheless.

I have all my programs installed on drive E:, albeit an internal drive.

It can be done, but I didn't recommend it either, as changing a USB
drive to a different port may result in a different drive letter being
assigned, nor do I believe they should be plugged in running 24/7.



--
Terry R.

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[Debbie Graham]

Okay I went to the website and from what I understand I should be shutting
it down through the safely remove program. So I guess I should be shutting
it down when I'm not using it. Thanks everyone

Debbie

 

[Twayne]

Debbie:

Okay I went to the website and from what I
understand I should be
shutting it down through the safely remove
program. So I guess I
should be shutting it down when I'm not using
it. Thanks everyone

I would dispute that they have to be powered down.
They create very little heat and the ONLY
difference between them and your internal drives
are the addition of USB/Firewire connections so it
can live in an external case. Mine typically run
several degrees F cooler than my internals, which
also have to put up with the cpu, power supply and
other components generating heat around them.
Based on heat alone, they should run longer than
internal drives but typically their lifetimes are
approximately equal.

The usual reason to power down an external drive
is to isolate it from the computer so that
viruses, hackers, etc., can not get to it to steal
data and also to prevent any catastrophic problem
on the computer that destroys the internal drives
won't also damage the external drive.
My 250 Gig and 500 Gig ext USB drives, one or
the other are powered on 24/7 and unless the
drive's paperwork says not to leave it plugged in
all the time, there is no need to turn the power
off. I've never seen a suggestion that a drive
needs to be powered down every xx hours for yy
minutes or hours; it's just not so.
Neither one of my drives gives off any
appreciable amount of heat; the cases are cool,
air vents dispense only slightly warm air.
My biggest reason for powering one 24/7: Both
of them power up/down with the computer so I
seldom have to touch them; backups to one or the
other run every night. Each month I switch which
drive is connected to the computer by simply
turning it off with the Safely REmove Hardware
icon; it powers the drive down to standby & it
won't restart until a machine reboot or physically
pushing the front power switch on the drive. I
also have them on a power center to kill the 120V
to them but that's not necessary if it's not
convenient to do.
I have backups run: Whenever any software is
installed or uninstalled, the amount of data to
any drive letter exceeds 500 Meg, and overnight
backups. So it needs to be on whenever the
computer is on.

Debbie
....

Terry:

Can you cite anything to back up that contention?
I am not saying it's not so, but: I've never seen
anything along those lines and I'm pretty sure
it's not factually sound. If I'm wrong I'll
happily admit to it, though.

There ARE reams of information on MTBFs,
meaningless as they actually are compared to
reality, and tons of life-cycle data, but I've
never seen anything indicating needing a power
down after xx hours for yy minutes/hours,
whatever. ALL drives are manufactured for 24/7
operation with the only occasional limitation
being whether the drive is placed vertically or
horizontally on the desktop/shelf. Whether it's
heat, electronic components or physical moving
parts wear, I've never seen anything to indicate
what you claim.

Regards,

Twayne

 

[Twayne]

message


If Windows is on the PC's hard drive (C, and a
program is installed
to an external hard drive, I would imagine that
would be messy. Have
you tried that? If it can be done, then I
retract my statement. But
even if it could be done, I wouldn't recommend
it. But it is
interesting, nonetheless.

I've never seen windows installed on an ext drive
either, but as long as the BIOS supports booting
from it, I don't see why it shouldn't work. I've
noticed the setting to boot from USB drives in my
own BIOS. I would think it might be slow, and
considering the size of the ext drives, more prone
to noticeable fragmentating problems, but it seems
it should work.

Installing programs on an ext drive though, I do
know works OK and isn't noticeably slower for the
programs that were installed there at least.
Installing a program to a drive other than the
system drive (normally C though, such as an ext
drive, does not mean that nothing gets installed
on the C drive. Registry entries and several
other things (ini files come to mind) still go to
the C drive. Only the bulk of the executables
actually go to the other drive; but not
everything, that's all.
I thought it would slow things down, but my
sister did it, and I do have to admit that it
worked out fine. It always boots to the same
drive letter so that's no problem, but what WAS a
problem was the time she brought me her machine to
work on and didn't bring along her external drive.
Naturally booting was an almost endless set of
error messages as file after file couldn't be
found by the registry<g>. I had to have her bring
me her external drive just to get the thing to
boot up properly.
I consider it a pretty sloppy thing to do, but
.... it does work. As someone else mentioned, if
it ever comes up as a different drive letter it's
going to cause some issues, too. She's on a fixed
budget, so I said too much to her about it. I
got her a bigger drive for Xmas this year and
she's happy as a lark now.

Cheers,

Twayne

 

[Jim]

I don't know too much about them but I just got one and was wondering if you
could only store files on it or actually install a program on them? Right
now I'm using it for storing my larger videos on and pictures. Thanks

Debbie

You can`t run programs from it UNLESS the program specifically says "
can be run from usb drive " .
Look here http://portableapps.com/

 

[John John (MVP)]

I've never seen windows installed on an ext drive
either, but as long as the BIOS supports booting
from it, I don't see why it shouldn't work.

It won't if it's a USB drive, you have to hack the USB stack
initialization for that to work.

John

 

[Twayne]

It won't if it's a USB drive, you have to hack
the USB stack
initialization for that to work.

John

Hmm, interesting. Maybe I'm about to learn
someting here.

Just for grins, I rebooted to take a look at my
BIOS again and I did describe it badly above; so
much for relying on memory.

Under "Boot", there is an option for "USB Boot",
along with SATA and IDE.
Under "Boot Device Priority" the external USB
drive is listed as a choice and can be made 1st
priority.

Now I AM curious!!

I can't tell who the BIOS is by: All the sysinfo
progs show is "Gateway" for a manufacturer, so
apparently Gateway bastardizes someone's BIOS to
be their own. Or even wrote their own, I suppose.
Anyway: Wouldn't you think that implies I
could install an OS to my USB drive and boot from
it as I would any internal drive?
I'm aware that XP supposedly can't boot from
USB unless the BIOS allows for it. Wouldn't you
think that "allows for it"?
Or is there still other work to be done to get
it to work?

I looked at Help and did some googling, but didn't
find anything definitive yet. Any experience with
this situation?
This is a Gateway E4100 desktop, over 4 yrs
old, for what it's worth. Not sure any of the
other specs would be meaningful.

Regards,

Twayne

 

[Anna]

Hmm, interesting. Maybe I'm about to learn someting here.

Just for grins, I rebooted to take a look at my BIOS again and I did
describe it badly above; so much for relying on memory.

Under "Boot", there is an option for "USB Boot", along with SATA and IDE.
Under "Boot Device Priority" the external USB drive is listed as a choice
and can be made 1st priority.

Now I AM curious!!

I can't tell who the BIOS is by: All the sysinfo progs show is "Gateway"
for a manufacturer, so apparently Gateway bastardizes someone's BIOS to be
their own. Or even wrote their own, I suppose.
Anyway: Wouldn't you think that implies I could install an OS to my USB
drive and boot from it as I would any internal drive?
I'm aware that XP supposedly can't boot from USB unless the BIOS allows
for it. Wouldn't you think that "allows for it"?
Or is there still other work to be done to get it to work?

I looked at Help and did some googling, but didn't find anything
definitive yet. Any experience with this situation?
This is a Gateway E4100 desktop, over 4 yrs old, for what it's worth.
Not sure any of the other specs would be meaningful.

Regards,

Twayne

Twayne:
All I can tell you is based upon our experience with hundreds of PCs, we
have never been successful in booting to a USB-connected external HDD in the
XP environment (at least in any reliable way). And we've worked with a large
variety of systems that ostensibly had USB boot capability. However, a
number of various newsgroup contributors and other commentators users have
reported that they have indeed been successful in booting to a USBEHD
containing a potentially-bootable XP OS. Usually their claims are couched in
phrases like "as long as the motherboard's BIOS supports this capability",
or some such. But as I've indicated we have never been able to duplicate
this capability. And I can't tell you how many BIOS's we've come across that
contain a setting that indicates a boot from a USB device is possible.

Having said all that, if you want to pursue the matter further...

Take a look at this Fred Lange article where Fred purports to have come up
with a process to achieve this "bootability". See
http://www.informationweek.com/shared/printableArticleSrc.jhtml?articleID=177102101

Also, a poster to one of the MS XP newsgroups claimed that he too has come
up with a methodology to do this as well. See
http://www.ngine.de/index.jsp?pageid=4176

And here's another one...
http://www.vandomburg.net/installing-windows-xp-from-usb/

(I haven't checked the above links in some time to determine if they're
still active but I'm sure you'll come across - via a Google search - a good
deal of info from commentators who provide info purporting to achieve this
USB-boot capability.)

As an aside...

Assuming a user is working with a PC that has SATA capability, what we
recommend to achieve boot capability via an *externally-connected* HDD is to
use a SATA external HDD that provides SATA-to-SATA connectivity (between the
external enclosure's SATA HDD and the PC). Naturally the system must have
SATA capability to begin with and a connection must be made to one of the
motherboard's SATA connectors or through a SATA or eSATA ("e" for
"external") port on the PC, or through a SATA adapter on the desktop PC's
case. This capability can also (but not always) be achieved with a
laptop/notebook using an eSATA ExpressCard device).
Anna

 

[John John (MVP)]

Hmm, interesting. Maybe I'm about to learn
someting here.

Just for grins, I rebooted to take a look at my
BIOS again and I did describe it badly above; so
much for relying on memory.

Under "Boot", there is an option for "USB Boot",
along with SATA and IDE.
Under "Boot Device Priority" the external USB
drive is listed as a choice and can be made 1st
priority.

Now I AM curious!!

I can't tell who the BIOS is by: All the sysinfo
progs show is "Gateway" for a manufacturer, so
apparently Gateway bastardizes someone's BIOS to
be their own. Or even wrote their own, I suppose.
Anyway: Wouldn't you think that implies I
could install an OS to my USB drive and boot from
it as I would any internal drive?
I'm aware that XP supposedly can't boot from
USB unless the BIOS allows for it. Wouldn't you
think that "allows for it"?
Or is there still other work to be done to get
it to work?

You may be able to boot a Windows PE or a Windows Embedded version or
other operating systems on USB but you can't boot a "regular" Windows
installation off a USB device. Just because the BIOS says it can boot
off a USB device it doesn't mean that Windows can boot off of it, as a
matter of fact it it is an unsupported scenario and without hacks and
modifications to the way the USB stack is initialized Windows cannot be
booted on a USB device. In essence the USB stack initialization is only
started long after the Session Manager has started the Windows session
so Windows cannot boot on it. Search the internet and you will find
recipes to accomplish this but the results reported are almost always
less than spectacular.

John

 

[Terry R.]

The date and time was Thursday, January 15, 2009 6:27:56 PM, and on a
whim, Debbie Graham pounded out on the keyboard:

Okay I went to the website and from what I understand I should be shutting
it down through the safely remove program. So I guess I should be shutting
it down when I'm not using it. Thanks everyone

Debbie

You're welcome Debbie.

--
Terry R.

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[Terry R.]

The date and time was Friday, January 16, 2009 6:54:11 AM, and on a
whim, Twayne pounded out on the keyboard:

Debbie:


I would dispute that they have to be powered down.
They create very little heat and the ONLY
difference between them and your internal drives
are the addition of USB/Firewire connections so it
can live in an external case. Mine typically run
several degrees F cooler than my internals, which
also have to put up with the cpu, power supply and
other components generating heat around them.
Based on heat alone, they should run longer than
internal drives but typically their lifetimes are
approximately equal.

The usual reason to power down an external drive
is to isolate it from the computer so that
viruses, hackers, etc., can not get to it to steal
data and also to prevent any catastrophic problem
on the computer that destroys the internal drives
won't also damage the external drive.
My 250 Gig and 500 Gig ext USB drives, one or
the other are powered on 24/7 and unless the
drive's paperwork says not to leave it plugged in
all the time, there is no need to turn the power
off. I've never seen a suggestion that a drive
needs to be powered down every xx hours for yy
minutes or hours; it's just not so.
Neither one of my drives gives off any
appreciable amount of heat; the cases are cool,
air vents dispense only slightly warm air.
My biggest reason for powering one 24/7: Both
of them power up/down with the computer so I
seldom have to touch them; backups to one or the
other run every night. Each month I switch which
drive is connected to the computer by simply
turning it off with the Safely REmove Hardware
icon; it powers the drive down to standby & it
won't restart until a machine reboot or physically
pushing the front power switch on the drive. I
also have them on a power center to kill the 120V
to them but that's not necessary if it's not
convenient to do.
I have backups run: Whenever any software is
installed or uninstalled, the amount of data to
any drive letter exceeds 500 Meg, and overnight
backups. So it needs to be on whenever the
computer is on.


Terry:

Can you cite anything to back up that contention?
I am not saying it's not so, but: I've never seen
anything along those lines and I'm pretty sure
it's not factually sound. If I'm wrong I'll
happily admit to it, though.

There ARE reams of information on MTBFs,
meaningless as they actually are compared to
reality, and tons of life-cycle data, but I've
never seen anything indicating needing a power
down after xx hours for yy minutes/hours,
whatever. ALL drives are manufactured for 24/7
operation with the only occasional limitation
being whether the drive is placed vertically or
horizontally on the desktop/shelf. Whether it's
heat, electronic components or physical moving
parts wear, I've never seen anything to indicate
what you claim.

Regards,

Twayne

Everyone has an opinion I guess. Like whether a computer should be
powered down each day or left on.

From experience, I have had well over a dozen external USB drives from
clients fail when left plugged in constantly. I did say to Debbie that
if the drive was designed for constant use (network drive), then that's
different. But not the cheapy drives with no fans.

I wouldn't risk my data on that type by leaving them plugged in all the
time. I have quite a few external drives. I plug them in, back up, and
unplug them. Even the little time they run they get quite warm.

Maybe your drives are 4,200 or 5,400 rpm drives. Mine are all 7,200 rpm.

Kind of like issues with laptop drives that overheat. No one says they
should be shut down, but quite a few brands have suffered issues with
hard drives dying because of overheating. I had one client who went
through 3 hard drives within her warranty period and finally gave up and
purchased a new one (she left it running all the time). She actually
gave it to me and I replaced the drive with a 7,200 rpm drive and make
sure it has enough ventilation and I've been using it for 3 years with
no issues.

--
Terry R.

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[Terry R.]

The date and time was Friday, January 16, 2009 7:16:13 AM, and on a
whim, Jim pounded out on the keyboard:

You can`t run programs from it UNLESS the program specifically says "
can be run from usb drive " .
Look here http://portableapps.com/

Hi Jim,

There's no reason a program can't be installed on an external USB drive
that gets assigned a drive letter. Portable apps don't write to the
registry or any other drive than they're installed to. That doesn't mean
another program can't be run from one. But like I told Debbie, plugging
the drive into another USB port may cause the drive letter to change,
which would not allow the program to run.

--
Terry R.

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