requesting assistance

[devonwoody]

Our daughter has purchased a gift for us of a portable harddrive (40gb usb2) for our PC to take away on holiday.
The harddrive arrived direct in the post from the supplier withou any documentation and no telephone or web support details.
supplier Mark Prince 170 Peakview House, Park Farm Drive, Allestree, derby DE22 2qp, which I assume is ex directory has no telephone number was on the package.
The drive has the Sony icon displayed on the casing with the numbers 10 and included was a usb lead and a 2.5"cd with drivers. I cannot trace which drivers to use because the case number is not indicated on the driver cd and there is also a lot of drivers not available owing to an error message.
Can anyone with portable haddrie experience advise me what installation and procedure I have to follow to back up photographs from my pictures to this hard drive.
Also is the portable harddrive compatible if pictures are saved from one computer but are to be read by another computer at a later date,is there is any prolceedure to follow doing this.

Do I have to make any BIOS changes to either computer?

 

[Adam]

Was it purchased off ebay?

Photographs saved on this drive should be readily viewable on any other computer you plug the drive into, although if you do find/need any drivers for it to work, best to take a seperate copy on a CD, so you can put that into the computer of the friend/family you are visiting, prior to plugging in the harddrive.

Adam

 

[LyNx]

DW, if like the lacie drives i use. You just plug them in, and that's it. If the PC's are all usb2 then fine, if usb1 then will be slower and your computer will advise you on this.

It'll just add inself to the computer and you will see it as the "E" - "F" drive, what evers next in line.

Only time you start running into problems is if using win95,98

 

[devonwoody]

Yes it was pretty certain to have come from an Ebay source, our daughter is hooked to that site.

OK Adam thanks for help, but if anyone recognises this portable harddrive perhaps they could steer me towards which dirvers to use, or if anyone knows of Mark Prince up in the Derby area.

 

[Adam]

Does it not just plug in and work?

Adam

 

[devonwoody]

Brilliant, it works just plug in.

That is after I found the tiny on off switch.

Driver disk does not appear necessary, Windows must hsve suitable drivers already available for this equipment.

THANKS TO ALL AGAIN, ( thats another benefit of having a forum like this).

 

[Sailor]

A bit late, but the drivers are usually supplied for win 98 & ME. After that, all PC's are plug and play - you can whiz the disc!

Colin

 

[filsgreen]

A bit late now DW, but was it bought new? I would be a bit wary of what was on a second hand HD for the obvious reasons.

Phil

 

[devonwoody]

BH Phil. do you mean you can plug in spies?

It looks new, the cd was sealed, leather case for drive was pristine and usb lead was tidy, but I can see the point of your reply.

 

[sooty]

Don't forget to format the drive before you use it?

 

[sooty]

Don't forget to format the drive before you use it?

 

[RogerS]

Don't forget to format the drive before you use it?

But before you do that remember to look up all the private passwords and credit card numbers that the previous owner left :evil:

 

[RogerS]

looks like it's dry powder. Any recommendations as to size?

Edit: senior moment here..posted to wrong thread

 

[devonwoody]

OK I have now formatted the drive. As mentioned by me earlier on this thread there was no documentation or help/support.

New question,
can I insert a software program into my cd rom drive tray (such as PSPro X) and ask the drive to send it to my new portable drive and then at a later date using another computer expect to be able to load this software to work on the substitute computer?

 

[DaveL]

New question,
can I insert a software program into my cd rom drive tray (such as PSPro X) and ask the drive to send it to my new portable drive and then at a later date using another computer expect to be able to load this software to work on the substitute computer?

Probably not. Some software will copy files into system folders, even when the bulk of the program and support files are on a different drive, also registry entries will be added during the install. There are some small programs that are self contained exe files and they will work. PSPro will not be one, some of the early versions where totally portable but as more and more features get added that goes out of the window.

 

[devonwoody]

Thanks Davel, I will have to take my software cd's with me on hols.

 

[mr]

IF you have a dig around google you will find a variety of "portable" applications which will do just this. Have a look here for example http://portableapps.com/ Most things can be made "portable" but it may not be worth the struggle you will often find an alternative.
What software in particular did you want to carry around with you?
Cheers Mike
Edit SOrry PSP (missed that) -presumably for picture editing. A free portable alternative would be the Gimp, linked to from the site above.

 

[devonwoody]

Thanks Mr.
Paint shop pro for my picture editing and its latest painting tools.
Two music software programs,
Band in a box music software with its own format,
Power tracks a midi program ( I know I can get free midi progs off the web but they never have successful score printing uses).
Knowing I was taking my new toy with me I thought I might be able to avoid crrying disks in luggage which with the latest scare stories giving the impression that 10,000 pieces of luggage worldwide go astray each day etc.etc.

 

[mr]

Gimp will certainly do all that PSP does though it's perhaps not as user friendly at first look.

Not sure about the music apps your specific requirements for printing etc would narrow the field. Would suggest you get hold of a USB memory stick and copy the apps accross from your hard drive to see if they work, preferably test them on a second machine, some may work some may not as Dave says they may well have various file dependencies. Another method depening on how much stuff you have installed would be to make an ISO image of your hard drive which you could carry on cd and mount as an executable set of files using Daemon tools, which you can get from http://www.daemon-tools.cc/dtcc/index.php? . Having said that this would be a time consuming and not particularly simple process to carry out.

Cheers Mike

 

[devonwoody]

Thanks again Mr.

I will go over to the Band in a box forum and ask there. I know it doesn't work copying the files over from the hard drive to a cd from a past excercise.

Its on the half chance that someone asks me to play there keyboard/organ and I can obtain the scores from those programs for my kind of music.