[AT] For those tractor (er computer) geeks on here

Larry D. Goss rlgoss at evansville.net
Mon Jun 26 11:08:08 PDT 2006


Well, there are warnings in both the Seagate and the Western Digital
instructions that you need to kind of "get permission" before unplugging
either of these devices.  They are both 80 Gigabyte storage units.  When
I ran into the problem with the WD, I was across the street from a Best
Buy out at the shopping mall in Cary, NC, so I went over and asked one
of the bright-eyed helpers if they had reports of any problems.  His
answer was that they only carried Seagate!  A month or so later, I had
need for another drive and I was up in the Cleveland-Akron area at the
time.  Since the best deal of the moment was a Seagate, I got one.  The
first thing I did with it was connect it to my daughter's ailing Dell
laptop (she has to spank it thoroughly to get it to power up) and I
downloaded all her data files (around 40 Gigabytes) as the first
operation with it.  I turned off all the power options and we just let
it set and crank away for a little better than 2 hours.  When it was
done, I went through the "Mother, May I?" routine and unplugged it
before shutting the computer down.  Since almost everything nowadays is
connected to your computer with USB ports of some type, it's important
that you remember the address of the USB drive so you know which one to
ask for permission to disconnect.  All of your USB devices come up on
the screen just above the tray (lower right-hand end of your monitor)
and you can ask that any one of them be disconnected.  Highlight the
wrong one and you could find yourself suddenly operating without a
keyboard.  =8-0

Like you and others, I plug and unplug the Thumb drives, camera cards,
Iomega Gigabank, and Hitachi mini-drive all the time with no problems.
But the USB drives apparently are different animals and operate with
different rules.  The USB drives come with software that must be loaded
before using the drive.  I suspect that it's a Windows XP plug-in that
simply activates a feature that has been a part of XP all along because
when I'm running either of the Western Digital or Seagate drives a brand
new icon shows up in the tray and I have control over dismounting any
USB device.  That icon is not there at any other time.

Larry 

-----Original Message-----
From: at-bounces at lists.antique-tractor.com
[mailto:at-bounces at lists.antique-tractor.com] On Behalf Of Mike Sloane
Sent: Monday, June 26, 2006 11:09 AM
To: Antique tractor email discussion group
Subject: Re: [AT] For those tractor (er computer) geeks on here

Interesting comments, Larry. I have been unplugging and plugging the 
Soyo hard drive and the "thumb" drive in and out of various machines 
several times a day, whether they are running or not, and have never 
found any problem with them being recognized or lose any data. These are

a mixture of XP and W98 laptops and desktops. On the other hand, I have 
disabled "power management" on all of my machines, as it caused nothing 
but problems. There was no warning in the instructions accompanying 
either device, so it never occurred to me that there might be a problem.

Mike

Larry D. Goss wrote:
> I'm on my third one, David.  They work exceptionally well.  I have
both
> Seagate and Western Digital.  They come with two "power cords" so that
> if your laptop (or desktop) is only equipped with USB 1.0 you can
shunt
> additional DC power to the drive through a second USB port.  I haven't
> needed the shunt cable with its "Y" connection on any of my equipment.
> Both brands are completely powered through a single USB port.
> 
> The only caveat is, DON'T DISCONNECT THE EXTERNAL DRIVE WITHOUT HAVING
> SOFTWARE SHUT IT DOWN.  For that matter, don't let your laptop
hibernate
> with the USB drive connected to it.  So if you attach a USB drive to
> your laptop, the first thing you want to do is to reset your power
> options so that the computer NEVER turns off and the drives NEVER turn
> off.  BTDT and I had to go around and around with Western Digital to
get
> them to understand that the drive had self-destructed without me doing
> anything except letting the computer set idle in a motel room while I
> sorted through a bunch of tractor literature in preparation for
scanning
> materials into PDF files.  When I went back to it about a half hour
> later, the USB drive had logically disconnected itself and because it
> wasn't shut down by the software in Windows XP correctly.  From that
> point onward, the drive was not recognized by any of my equipment.
> Western Digital made good on the USB drive, but I lost a couple Gig's
of
> file material.
> 
> The bottom line is: USB drives are "plug and play", but they are NOT
> "unplug and get on with your life".  You have to use the software to
> shut them down before unplugging.  The process actually turns off the
> motor of the drive and makes sure the process happens when the drive
is
> idle.
> 

-- 
Mike Sloane
Allamuchy NJ
<mikesloane at verizon.net>
Website: <www.geocities.com/mikesloane>
Images: <www.fotki.com/mikesloane>

It is not bigotry to be certain we are right; but it is bigotry to be
unable to imagine how we might possibly have gone wrong. -G.K.
Chesterton,
essayist and novelist (1874-1936)


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