Re: USB key drives

 
There are at least 2 "learn the hard way" issues with external drives
and USB keys.

Using old drives in those "kits" is pretty neat. I've it done twice,
Once succesfully.

It turns out the power fed from USB ports is not equal on all USB ports,
meaning my laptop may not have as much power available as yours or the
sum of whatever power that is available across all ports may be diluted
by the other USB devices that are being used.

In trying to figure out why my 120 GB external drive worked "sometimes"
I found that various devices may or may not come with an A/C power
adapter which may or may not need to be used.

Whenever the drive acted up, I pulled the other USB device out and the
drive would work fine. In check various forums I find this is very
common. 

Some the "Use your old hard drive" kits come with a Y cable so you can
get the power you need by using 2 USB ports funnelled into one connector
your little drive. Some kits come with a place to plug in an A/C adapter
but you have buy one elsewhere.

Another annoying (very annoying) thing about USB keys is that some come
with some Auto-run software loaded in the key to do special (cute but
useless) stuff. There is a good chance you will rue the day you use one
of these. The forums are loaded with people with locked up PCs once that
software gets loaded. Often the documentation mentions about how to
remove the autorun stuff. It doesn't always get removed. We bought a
bunch of these and the lock ups occurr or don't occur on identically
configured identical PCs. 

The clue that a landmine is out there on your pc is when you use window
explorer to view the hierarcy of your drives and you see that the USB
key has installed itself as a CD/DVD drive. Any thing other than a
simple "removable disk" should be a warning.

Since tossing out the "Sandisc Cruisers" and buying vanilla USB keys we
haven't had any of the silliness. 

Steve Moland
Access Paths Inc
12 Parmenter Rd Unit C4
Londonderry NH 03053
603 845-0190 Ext 2
steve@xxxxxxxxxxx 

date: Thu, 22 Mar 2007 08:37:24 -0400
from: PaulMmn <PaulMmn@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
subject: Re: USB key drives

Oh, I don't know--  I recently upgraded the drive in my laptop. 
Thinking I'd need to transfer 'stuff' from the old drive, I 
bought the new drive and also a USB porta-case for the old drive.

I now have a 6 Gig USB drive about the size of a small 
paperback book.  It would fit comfortably in the inside 
pocket of a suit coat.

If I had the motivation and a few more bucks, it could be 100 
Gig or better!

--Paul E Musselman
PaulMmn@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx