I think I am going to give up on the extra drives. Killer is right, in the end 16GB really is NOT worth all of this hassel. But, to answer you Pasty, not only was the power source a problem in the END of the external's lifespan, but there was a secondary problem that kept plaguing the drive since day one. When I used the drive, I was going between three different versions of Windows (XP, Vista, and 7). It would seem like the drive became incompatible when I would plug it into another operating system and request to be formatted. Each time I wold format in NFTS (as I was told this was the possible problem, the foling system between FAT/FAT32 and NFTS)... but this problem would persist. With THIS setup... even though painstaking and time consuming... it has been no money spent. All of my computers that need storage can connect to it now without the worry or hazard of "Will it ask me to format the drive again?". This external was a real pain in my side until I decided to get this task underway, and since it is complete I've enjoyed a week or so of solid worry-free storage. It's been nice. It is a little larger, and took some extra work, but damn it-- it works and it is dependable. Even BETTER is that I can access this from my iPhone since LogMeIn is on it. So, in the end while an enclosure or a new external might be easier... this still works for me. Thanks all for your help. Frankentower is up and running, and life is good! You are all awesome!!
Back to the drawing board guys. So, Frankentower works great... so long as a mouse, keyboard and monitor are plugged in. Since I want to run this as external storage ONLY and remotely control the tower (powering down every now and again depending on circumstance) it needs to be able to turn it on... it boots the OS and voila, its ready for Network Sharing and LogMeIn. However, when I start the tower without at least a monitor and keyboard attached to the tower the tower makes two beeps and will NOT run the OS. When I plug in the monitor is tells me the boot sequence failed, sometimes it tells me no media drive was found and runs over and over one of those messages. If I then reboot (monitor and keyboard plugged in) it boots fine. Any ideas? I'd google it... but I do not even know how to define this.
Go into the bios and make sure that it is not set to halt on any errors. Also remove that floppy drive (both physically, and from bios)...if you like the look of it, just leave it there and disconnect it. While you are in BIOS, set the "default display" to whatever display you are using. As for startup, just use Wake on LAN...it is a setting in the bios, turn it on and you can boot the system using an app on another PC.
I'll give those a try. Getting into the BIOS is a challenge, it usually does not give me a key to get there before doing the error message I mentioned before. But hopefully I will get there and get this solved. Thanks! I'll let you know how it goes.
Ah, problem solved. Thank-you again Killer, I am in your debt! The startup process is a litle slower now... not sure what I enabled or disabled to do it but it starts-up normally without monitor or keyboard just fine now every time. While I was in there I set it to startup at 8a.m., everyday AND added the new Audiogalaxy beta to stream my 30GB music library to my iPhone so long as I get a data signal. Frankentower's usefulness just grows and grows. Thank-you again! You were all awesome!! I'd give you all donuts but they wouldn't fit in the ethernet port...
