Bill in Co. wrote:
| PCR wrote:
| Bill in Co. wrote:
| PCR wrote:
| Bill in Co. wrote:
| PCR wrote:
| ...snip
| Those are my sentiments too. It's Colorado who first discovered
| the mdgx site, & it's up to him to get bloody with Terhune-- not
| us!
|
| Well, I'm not waiting - I'm done with it already. I did it
| months ago, and as far as I'm concerned, I'm through, and moving
| on to more pressing things - like using this new "USB 2.0
| External Hard Drive Enclosure" for a perfect partition copy
| backup of the boot drive (including ALL the directory and file
| dates!), and, what a joy it is, compared to the previous,
| tedious, procedure, of having to manually swap in/out the backup
| IDE hard drive each time!
|
| I've been meaning to ask about that. Did you need to do a separate
| download for the USB 2.0 drivers, or did they come with the device?
|
| They came on the enclosed CD. No download needed. It was
| recognized by windows as new hardware, and installed pretty easily.
|
| Nice.
|
| I should add, you can also go to their website and download Win98SE
| drivers (as I just happened to look there recently), but as I said,
| you don't need to do that, since they are on the Vantec CD.
|
| Did it install flawlessly & well the first time? Is there any
| confusion with drive letters when the thing is turned on/off-- does
| D:\ change to E:\ for instance? What was the ultimate cost?
|
| Pretty much installed almost flawlessly (I say "almost", because I
| made the mistake of leaving my BIOS set to include any USB drives
| (along with floppies) in the boot sequence. So it tried to boot
| first on the enclosure drive (which I had NOT installed the drivers
| on!), and since I had left my backup drive with its partition set as
| Active in BING, that wasn't too nice. :-) My mistake. But
| having recognized that and fixing that problem, it went fine.
|
| Hmmm. My own BIOS in "Boot Order" only mentions...
|
| (a) CD-ROM Drive: Second
| (b) Floppy Drive A: First
| (c) Hard Drive C: Third
|
| So, I guess I needn't worry! Glad you survived it.
|
| In my BIOS bootup options there were also options like ARMD-HDD, for
| "ATAPI Removeable Media Drive", which presumably includes the USB
| external drive enclosure with the IDE drive inside. Unfortunately,
| I had forgotten about that, AND on top of that I had left the Active
| Partition flag SET on the enclosure drive, so that wasn't nice!
| Dumb on my part. Live and Learn. The way I have my BIOS setup now
| is like yours.

I've actually seen "Hard Drive C" drop OFF my boot order screen, when I
removed the hard drive & plugged it into a Maxtor/Promise Ultra 100 ATA
Adapter Card. Could be, who knows, something will pop onto it, if/when I
plug in a USB Enclosure with an HDD on it-- BUT the one in the Adapter
sure did not! Anyhow, I wouldn't necessarily want to boot it, but would
only do what you have done-- instead/in addition to of my current always
connected backup HDD inside the box.

| Cost was around $30 for the USB 2.0 HD enclosure (enclosing the IDE
| drive).
|
| Not bad.
|
| Without shipping, that is. (Or maybe it was $35.00)

Getting worse, but still acceptable.

| I leave the USB connector plugged in, but only switch the enclosure
| drive on (small power switch, on back of enclosure) when I want to
| make a backup. Nothing to connect or disconnect any more!! Oh
| JOY!! And most of the time my backup drive is NOT being used, so it
| has a pretty "unlimited" lifetime.
|
| Yea. Sounds good.
|
| The Vantec looks pretty elegant in its style, sitting here on my
| desk, and has a nice blue light (in a sleek blue case) for showing
| disk activity.
|
| That proves you are overall happy with it, if you think it's
| beautiful.
|
| Not just me - if you go look at the reviews (like some on Amazon),
| you'll see.
| Here's a link that I think still works:
|
http://www.amazon.com/Vantec-NexStar.../dp/tech-data/
| B0009HMT9Y/ref=de_a_smtd/103-9574051-1259041

That does look good all in blue, Colorado. But all my USB ports are on
the floor, & I hope I never step on the thing!

| The only thing I don't like about it is it's a tight fit getting the
| drive in the case, so if someone wanted to remove it and swap in/out
| another IDE drive, that wouldn't be too easy. I don't, so it's no
| biggie.
|
| For others, it might be a deal breaker, though. Well, thanks for the
| report.
|
| Yes - if one were going to need to remove the enclosure drive fairly
| often, there would probably be better choices out there.

I will look research the options when the time comes, BUT at least I
know the Vantec likely will work-- & with BING too!

| I *do*, however, like the fact that the Vantec Nexstar 3 model uses a
| large aluminum heat sink for the drive inside its case, and thus does
| not need a fan for the enclosed hard drive (and that may be part of
| the reason for the tight fit).

That's a good tradeoff, I guess. It doesn't scald your hands like
Blanton's do? But maybe you're not runnong it long, too.

| Not all USB External HD enclosure models are like this, and
| especially if it were an all plastic design (as some models
| apparently are), one would probably want a fan to cool the enclosure
| drive (and some other models have that). But as for the fan?
| Thanks, but no thanks - I like mine noiseless, and it runs cool,
| anyways.

That sounds reasonable to me, & I'll keep it in mind for sure. Thanks.


--
Thanks or Good Luck,
There may be humor in this post, and,
Naturally, you will not sue,
Should things get worse after this,
PCR