Portable HDD Question...

neezee · Jan 19, 2007, 03:59 PM

wats good ppl...

just got a vantec nexstar3 and i formatted it to a FAT32 but it shows up as a HDD instead of a portable one anyway to turn it so that wen i plug it in it acts as a "Removable Disk"???

thx neezee

H3X4D3C1M4L · Jan 19, 2007, 04:13 PM

It technically does act as a removable disk.... since you can remove it easy while the system is running... it shows up as a hard drive because it IS a hard drive.

So don't worry about it. If its FAT32 and you haven't modified it in device manager properties to run on performance mode... you can remove it without using the "Safely remove drive" icon.

neezee · Jan 19, 2007, 04:25 PM

^hmmm i used PowerQuest PartitionMagic and formatted it there as logical FAT32 any diff/the "safely remove drive" doesnt show so would it NOT b in preformance mode?... dont know much...

H3X4D3C1M4L · Jan 19, 2007, 04:29 PM

PQ magic, windows, doesn't matter... FAT32 formatted is FAT32 formatted.

That little icon with the green arrow should show up if you have all those removable drives and that USB hard drive on though, if it doesn't then I donno maybe your Windows is due for a reformat?

neezee · Jan 19, 2007, 06:45 PM

^well thats what happens when i plug in any external storage... ive never seen the "safely remove drive" icon b4... dunno hopefully nothin happens to the stuff on my vantec since its gonna b my primary drive for a video editing project...

EDIT: just tested my rally/vantec both have the safley remove thing on my laptop but not my desktop...never paid attention to it till now... is "safely remove drive" really important i guess thats my question...

H3X4D3C1M4L · Jan 25, 2007, 11:59 AM

Not if you haven't gone into device manager and set both drives to run in Performance Mode with write caching enabled. If you haven't nothing will happen because the sole purpose of that icon is to flush the write cache for devices that have it enabled and are plugged into a non-internal bus (USB/firewire etc).

Even with write cache enabled I yank my drive out all the time because that damn icon never works, and I still never get any data loss.

The way to make sure the filesystem is fine is run this in CMD

Code:

chkdsk /f /x /v

Of course if you REALLY want to be sure and are fine leaving it overnight (depending on drive size and speed) run this

Code:

chkdsk /f /x /v /r