external HDD - help wise people

[duncan]

Ok, I have been given a HDD says it's 80Gb Maxtor but only shows up as 50Gb - I have it in an external case and use it to back up from other 2 computers. It seems to take an age longer to copy a file onto it although it is fine reading from - opens a 1.5Mb picture instantly. Is this usual for HDD in external cases due to the electronics involved to convert from IDE to USB slowing it up - also can anyone explain why it says 80Gig on drive but is only 50.

weird...

 

[NeoExtreme]

Did you partition the hard drive?

 

[duncan]

no, I've looked at it with Partition Magic and it is 48.8G and only one partition

 

[ShadowFalls]

it appears this is what happening, A) its not seeing all the partitions possibly corrupt B) only one partition was ever made or C) it was never an 80 gig drive in the first place

if there is anything important on there copy it off and repartition the drive it should be able to see all available free space.

As for it being slow, do you have USB 2.0? if not, and you ahve USB 1.1, then it would be transferring at 12mbit/sec or 1.5mb/sec

 

[duncan]

I have USB 2 through a PCMCIA slot on my laptop that I use to connect to it

 

[Samm]

You should be able to determine the drives actual size from the model number.
If you pop the drive out of the caddy & look on the label, you might even see the capacity stated on it. If not, let me know the exact model number (and manufacturer) & I'll tell you what size it should be.

 

[duncan]

ok - really sorry everyone - being a dipshit - there was another 30G's of unallocated space that I couldn't see before - so size problem is no more - ho ho ) - howver, still issue of really slow copying even over USB2

 

[ShadowFalls]

ok - really sorry everyone - being a dipshit - there was another 30G's of unallocated space that I couldn't see before - so size problem is no more - ho ho ) - howver, still issue of really slow copying even over USB2

what is the specs of this laptop? have you tried the external hard drive on another system also?

 

[Him]

What is the model of the drive? It may not be a USB 2.0 compliant HDD. If it isnt 2.0, simply plugging it into a 2.0 slot wont make it run at 480mbps, it is backwards compliant and will run at 12mbps.

 

[duncan]

ok - it is a Maxtor 80Gb HDD - fairly new I think - the USB 2.0 notebook card is Belkin - I suspect there might be a problem with either this or my PCMCIA slots. I have only used the card with a mouse until today and now I have tried to use it for mass data transfer I have noticed the problem - I can transfer much faster using normal USB 1 ports built in, so seems as though not a problem with drive. I have XP Pro SP2 which should be able to drive the notebook card, but just in case I have tried to install the Belkin Drivers, still same in Device manager, although it never mentioned USB 2 anywhere, which the manual said that it should. Hmmmm