I've been looking over external USB-interface HD's for the last couple of weeks, and have come to the conclusion that it would be a lot cheaper to roll my own, so to speak; Western Digital's 80GB external HD is $200, for example. I have three spare IDE HD's - a Maxtor 20GB, a WD 40GB and a WD 80GB - that are potential candidates for adaptation for an external role; I'll probably use the 80GB unit. There are a couple of issues that need to be taken into account:

1) The external unit should work under Win98SE, WinXP (SP2) and Linux (Mandrake/Mandriva 10.1)
2) It should be backward-compatible with USB 1.1 because I may be connecting it to my Thinkpad 600E (which runs Win98SE)

Best Buy has an Adaptec model (I forget the exact designation) which retails for $50 and looks promising. Should I get that one, or are there others I should be looking at?

One more thing: The drives are already formatted (they're all working pulls) but will need to be reformatted. If I use the 80GB unit, I will need to format it to FAT32 so that it can be read/written to under all three OS'es listed above; I will probably have to make at least three logical partitions if I can't set up a FAT32X partition.

-Joe-

Just get an aluminum case, it will last longer.

I bought two Vantec NexStar USB housings at Micro Center today. They have aluminum construction and external power bricks and seem to be fairly easy to put together. I got two since I've decided to convert both my WD 40GB and 80GB to external units; the 80GB will be semipermanently attached to my main system while the 40GB will serve as additional storage for my Thinkpad and a file-transfer device. I will have to repartition both of them; they're already formatted in FAT32, but the 80GB is formatted as one large partition (from when it was the C: drive on my previous system) and WinXP doesn't allow FAT32 partitions larger than 32GB, so I'll have to make at least three partitions on the 80GB and two on the 40GB.

-Joe-

I will have to repartition both of them; they're already formatted in FAT32, but the 80GB is formatted as one large partition (from when it was the C: drive on my previous system) and WinXP doesn't allow FAT32 partitions larger than 32GB, so I'll have to make at least three partitions on the 80GB and two on the 40GB.
-Joe-

IT AINT SO JOE.

You can convert the partotions to NTFS and then use the disk manager in XP to make them any size you want.

Well, that may be so. But right now, I'm having problems even installing the drivers in Win98SE on my other systems, let alone setting up the drive in XP.

I bought two Vantec NexStar boxes today as I'm planning to convert both my surplus Western Digital drives to external units. However, I couldn't get the driver installation to finish even though I followed the manual's instructions precisely. The problem occurred when I got to the point where I was supposed to plug in the drive after I installed the drivers from CD. The system couldn't find the drivers anywhere, even though I uninstalled and reinstalled several times. Then I went to vantecusa.com and found out that some Win98SE installations don't like the CD drivers, and downloaded the alternate drivers. I installed those drivers on my XP 2000 (Win98SE) system. That still doesn't solve the problem. The USB mass storage driver is installed, but the USB-to-ATAPI adapter driver is still not installed properly even though I tried a couple of times to refresh the driver. I'm having similar problems on my Thinkpad. I'm beginning to think I should just return the units tomorrow (to Micro Center, which fortunately has a liberal return policy) and search for another make of USB box.

-Joe-

EDIT: UPDATE - Cancel what I said about the Thinkpad. I just installed the alternate driver from Vantec successfully on the Thinkpad, using the 80GB drive. I'm going to try the 40GB drive now and see if that one works on the notebook. If so, the problem is probably somewhere on my old Athlon system; if not, the drive itself may be experiencing problems or the box may be bad.

FURTHER UPDATE: I had some problems accessing the 80GB HD on the Athlon XP system (Windows 98 SE), but set it up successfully on my XP system (which is where I intend to use it most of the time anyway) and have repartitioned it into three 26GB drives.

YET ANOTHER UPDATE: I just did a hard reboot (shutdown and restart) on my Thinkpad with the 40GB unit connected, and this time when Windows restarted the system saw the new USB drive properly. It seems "hot swapping" may not be working properly here; I may have to shut down and restart the systems each time I want to switch around the USB drives. In any event, the point is that the drives are now working properly on the XP system and the Thinkpad (I still have to figure out how to get them to work correctly on the Athlon XP, but then that system has had some problems ever since I lost the previous mobo to bad capacitors in '03.

With my external [USB2 connected] IDE HDD, there is an icon in the System Tray [prog running in the background] that must be clicked to "Safely Remove" the drive [and ok that when successful] before switching it off at the switch on the housing.
The housing can be powered up and switched on either before PC Startup, or after Windows is running, when it will be detected and enabled and the background progs started.

WinXP doesn't allow FAT32 partitions larger than 32GB
I know you are sorting-out other areas but for clarification Win2K/XP can use but not create FAT32 partitions over 32GB. Other formatters from DOS to 3rd-Party Utilities can exceed the paltry 32GB that the WinXP formatter can achieve.

The 80GB drive has been working properly on the XP box for a week now, but I'm still having some problems with the 40GB drive for the Thinkpad 600E (again, running Win98SE; I think the USB port is USB 1.1). The drive won't work properly if I plug it into the port after Windows has started; it seems it has to be plugged in and powered up before system boot. Also, there's no icon in the system tray to click for "safely remove hardware" in Win98 that I can detect, but then I had to go back to Vantec's site and get that other driver (as I mentioned previously) because neither of my Win98 systems liked the original CD drivers. Furthermore, I bought a USB 2.0 PC Card (Bytecc) last weekend to try to upgrade my Thinkpad to USB2. After some trial and error I got the card installed properly and it does produce a "safely remove hardware" icon when properly plugged in, but the external HD simply will not work when connected to the card, no matter whether it is plugged in before or after system boot.

Do you have the correct Win98SE drivers?
Mine had to also match the particular USB2 cable I was using [AT2], because the cable includes the USB electronics rather than the housing [to reduce the cost of multiple housings]. I was supplied with a CD that had MANY different versions of the driver to suit different OS's and different hardware [cable].

See http://www.pcguide.com/vb/showthread.php?t=36519&highlight=USB
but try to focus on the beginning and end, and ignore all the false leads in the middle.

If you go to Device Manager, "View Devices by Connection" and expand the tree, do you see anything like this?

The USB 2.0 card and the USB hard drive are playing together properly now. It turned out that there was a little cable in the package that I had previously ignored that was actually crucial to the setup; it has to be plugged into the card at one end and into the PS/2 port on the other end - apparently it furnishes extra power to the PC Card or something like that. Also, the drive has to be plugged into the card and powered up _before_ I turn on the Thinkpad; it won't work if I plug it into the card after boot. With those caveats, though, the card and drive are now working together.

-Joe-

With my setup I can flick the switch on the housing [power it up] after Windows has booted, and the drive is detected and enabled by Windows [provided all connections are properly made].
Must "safely remove" before switching off.