Portable hard drive for 64-bit vista

[Dave]

I am trying to find, with out much luck, a good portable hard drive for my
laptop. There are a lot of choices, but 99% of them have a disclaimer that
they won't work with Vista 64 bit. I'm looking for something in the 320 to
500 GB range that I don't need a loan for!
I bought a Seagate FreeAgent and the package said "works with Vista". I went
to their website for install instructions and found, in micro print, "no
support for Vista 64, only Vista 32 bit". The statement on their packaging
pretty much took care of their credibility and truthfulness!
Any ideas would be appreciated.

Dave

 

[the wharf rat]

I am trying to find, with out much luck, a good portable hard drive for my
laptop. There are a lot of choices, but 99% of them have a disclaimer that
they won't work with Vista 64 bit. I'm looking for something in the 320 to
500 GB range that I don't need a loan for!

ANY USB hard drive that's formatted to a standard NTFS file system
will work with any Vista. Period the end.

The ones that won't are the ones that try to be clever and use
encrypted file systems that require software to access.

Here's what you do: Buy a nice big sata drive of your choice.
Buy a nice aluminum USB sata drive enclosure. Lots of colors and styles,
with and without fans. Whatever. INstall drive, plug in, use drive
management to format.

 

[mazorj]

It may just be Seagate's drive management and back-up software that is
not compatible with Vista 64. Plug it in and check to see if the OS
recognizes and will read/write to it. If so, it ought to come up in
Windows Explorer and as a Save As choice in applications.

I had similar problems with a WD external drive. Once I stopped using
and/or uninstalled all the WD software and went to conventional use of
the drive, it works fine even though it's formatted in FAT32. I use
Norton's back-up program but any standard OEM or third-party Windows
back-up routines ought to work as well once you let Vista treat it
like any other USB drive.

BTW, many early Vista 64 owners found out the hard way that early
adaptations of h/w and s/w to make them "Vista compatible" only
included 32-bit platforms. I made several wasted purchases before I
caught on to the fact that up until recently, developers considered
the 64-bit Vista market to be too small of a user base to bother with.
I guess that in their view at that time, if 95% of their potential
buyers using Vista had Vista 32, that was good enough to justify
claiming that their product would work on Vista systems - and too bad
for the other 5%. It wasn't until computer manufacturers started
selling Vista 64 PCs in quantity that the third-party s/w and
peripheral vendors started explicitly noting on the package whether
their product would work (or would not work) under Vista 64. Grrr...

 

[Richard G. Harper]

Any drive that works in Vista 32-bit should work in Vista 64-bit. I
haven't found one yet that won't work for me. I would suspect that the
disclaimer on the package refers to any bundled or utility software that
comes with or on the drive. The drive itself should work fine.

 

[Dave]

Thanks to all for the advice! I really get bummed at the developers for
ignoring Vista 64. I'm going to ponder the suggestions and give it a shot.
All I wanted to do was have the portable to save music and photos on so I
would not clutter my main drive. I get real anal about having unused or
seldom used stuff on the hard drive.
Thanks again for the prompt and informative replies!

Dave