"Ken" <noreply@charter.net> wrote in message
news:VsFXj.16$aq.4@newsfe05.lga...
> Pegasus (MVP) said the following on 5/17/2008 11:12 AM:
>> "Ken" <noreply@charter.net> wrote in message
>> news:w0FXj.13$aq.12@newsfe05.lga...
>>> I purchased a mobile rack and three interchangeable trays for storing
>>> data I don't need very often. I installed it first in my Windows 2000
>>> system and it functions just fine--the disks are recognized when
>>> inserted and the powered up, and I can interchange them at will without
>>> problems.
>>>
>>> I recently built a new system based on Windows XP SP3. I purchased a
>>> second mobile rack for that unit with the expectation that I could use
>>> the mobile hdd's in either workstation.
>>>
>>> On the XPstation I have a C: drive active partition, a D: DVD writer, an
>>> E: partition (on the same drive as the C: drive) and an F: drive on its
>>> own partition (separate drive). I have 6 SATA connectors on my Intel
>>> DP35DP mb with the DVD writer on the first, disk 0 on the second, disk 1
>>> on the third, and the mobile rack on the fourth (as they appear in the
>>> BIOS)
>>>
>>> When I insert the tray/drive into the internal mobile rack into the XP
>>> unit, one of two things happens:
>>> 1. the drive is not recognized
>>> 2. the drive is recognized but my drive letter for my DVD writer is
>>> reassigned from D: to G: drive.
>>> 3. the mobile rack is not recognized in the BIOS as existingMobile
>>>
>>> I thought it was the cables, but that is not an issue. I thought it was
>>> the connectors, but those are not the issue. It is not the units, as
>>> both mobile racks work in the Win2K station without problem. Thinking
>>> it might be data written to the hdd by Win2K that was causing the
>>> problem, I reformatted the disks, but that did not help.
>>>
>>> Does anyone have any suggestions? Is there something that needs to be
>>> changed in the BIOS of the new Intel motherboard? Is this a problem
>>> with the mobile rack that is installed in my XP machine? (the unit in
>>> the Win2K machine is IDE and in the XP machine it is a SATA connection)
>>>
>>> Thanks
>>
>> I have had some mobile racks that were marginal. Sometimes the
>> disks inside were recognised, sometimes they weren't. These days
>> I use external USB cases. They always work and I can connect/
>> disconnect them while Windows is up and running.
>>
>> If you intend to stick to mobile racks then you should examine the
>> boot messages generated by your BIOS. Does it recognise the
>> disks?
>>
>> You can resolve the drive letter issue by running diskmgmt.msc
>> from the Start/Run box and assigning a letter of your choice to
>> the mobile rack disks.
> Were you using external USB racks or separate powered cases for each hdd?
> I was hoping to just have one device for each computer so that I could
> exchange info. How does the exchange rate of info compare between a USB
> connection and USB 2.0? It would mainly be for exchanging large (4.5GB)
> files between computers for burning DVDs or playing videos over my LAN
> with VidLAN.
>
> Thanks
> Ken K

I usually use 2.5" disks. They are nice and small and they do not
require an external power supply.

USB1 is painfully slow but USB2 is much faster. It took me 67
seconds to copy a 1 GByte file from an internal IDE disk to an
external disk in a USB2 case. Here are the commands I used.
Note that drive C: should be an NTFS volume.
fsutil file createnew c:\big.bin 1000000000 (creates a 1 GByte file)
timethis copy c:\big.bin U:\ (measures the time to copy)