How easily connect USB hard drive to other systems?

M

Mozzy

In general, if I have a portable hard drive with a USB connector then
(assuming the other system has a USB port) what other items need to
be in place for them to access the data on that drive?

It is most likely that the target system will be running WinXP.
Below are the sorts of things I would like to know about.

------

Are there certain XP patches which need to be installed?

Is it likely that a motherboard which has a USB port will need to
have a BIOS upgrade in order to see a USB hard drive?

Does the 137 GB limit apply to USB hard drives or does XP use its own
drivers to access it?

Etc.
 
A

Area

Mozzy said:
In general, if I have a portable hard drive with a USB connector then
(assuming the other system has a USB port) what other items need to
be in place for them to access the data on that drive?

It is most likely that the target system will be running WinXP.
Below are the sorts of things I would like to know about.

------

Are there certain XP patches which need to be installed?

Is it likely that a motherboard which has a USB port will need to
have a BIOS upgrade in order to see a USB hard drive?

Does the 137 GB limit apply to USB hard drives or does XP use its own
drivers to access it?

Etc.

It is pure plug and pray in Windows XP. Absolutely nothing has to be
done when you plug in the disk. Default windows drivers will take care
of it. :)

Area
 
G

GB

Area said:
It is pure plug and pray in Windows XP. Absolutely nothing has to be done
when you plug in the disk. Default windows drivers will take care of it.
:)

Area

I bought and installed an 80GB USB drive yesterday. The instructions for
Win XP were: plug in. :) That worked.

One minor point: The drive came formatted as FAT32, which is a problem with
NTBackup, as it wanted to create a file bigger than 4 GB. Windows happily
formatted it as NTFS in a few minutes.
 
P

Paul Hopwood

Mozzy said:
In general, if I have a portable hard drive with a USB connector then
(assuming the other system has a USB port) what other items need to
be in place for them to access the data on that drive?
It is most likely that the target system will be running WinXP.
Below are the sorts of things I would like to know about.
Are there certain XP patches which need to be installed?
Is it likely that a motherboard which has a USB port will need to
have a BIOS upgrade in order to see a USB hard drive?
Does the 137 GB limit apply to USB hard drives or does XP use its own
drivers to access it?

All versions of Windows later than 98SE include the USB mass storage
drivers required for supporting USB drives. It should be detected by
plug and play when you connect it and work just like any other drive.

--
 
N

Nina

Paul Hopwood said:
-------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------

I had this problem, XP wouldn't immediately recognise a HDD connected by
USB2 port. I had to go into Disk Management (right click my computer, then
manage) and initialise and format the disk. After doing this, the HDD
appeared in 'my computer' and was ready to use.

Hope that's what you meant your problem was!
 
T

Thomas Wendell

That's an enclosure-related limit. I just a cheapo (~45EUR) and it states
that 240GB is max (in this one). And there are external disks for sale up to
at least 500GB (LaCie)....(I think the 1Tera is FW only?)


--
Tumppi
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