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The Official PC building thread - 4th Edition

Discussion in 'Building a new PC' started by ddp, Sep 13, 2010.

Page 68 of 399
  1. sammorris

    sammorris Senior member

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    As someone who's used USB externals and USB sticks continuously for 7 years, I don't honestly think that's valid criticism. The clue is common sense. Don't unplug a drive while its in the middle of being written to. Even if you do, the worst you'll manage is corrupting its contents. Wipe it clean and start again and you'll be fine. You can't damage the hardware of an external device by unplugging it during data transmission.
     
    sammorris, Mar 4, 2011
    #1341
  2. creaky

    creaky Moderator Staff Member

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    I always, always safely 'eject' ie remove USB sticks/USB HDD's but am well aware of the risks of not doing it, too many times at work we have to tell people their data has gone due to yanking them out (even when they've finished writing), it's just not worth the risk. Obviously the devices don't get damaged but the data is too easily lost.
    I often see/experience data lost when one of my USB HDD's doesn't quite get enough juice from it's little power lead, the error is along the lines of this ~
    [​IMG]
    and that's the kind of thing that often happens when USB isn't ejected properly.

    At the end of the day it's just not worth the hassle to not eject things properly, we drum it into peoples' heads at work. Luckily our own backups are great otherwise people can potentially lose important data that way, but as i say we make sure to educate people, they soon mend their silly ways when they lose their data anyway.
     
    Last edited: Mar 4, 2011
    creaky, Mar 4, 2011
    #1342
  3. Mr-Movies

    Mr-Movies Active member

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    Wrong, assumption and conclusion, and you pride yourself in that, WOW! Too many people that know much more than you seem to would argue that you are flat out wrong. You'll never see that though. Too bad I'd say.

    Windows sees hard drives as internal devices regardless of whether they are attached via USB or otherwise. The trash can attaches to them and is one point of a potential problem. You can turn off the feature of caching deleted files and that helps but it is still Windows assumption that the drive is internal that can cause problems. You certainly can corrupt a drive when it is just idle and quickly removing it. There are many variables involved here and it wouldn’t be worth it to go further.
     
    Mr-Movies, Mar 4, 2011
    #1343
  4. Deadrum33

    Deadrum33 Active member

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    You just said it all right there, AHCI. It depends how you setup the SATA mode on your mobo(IDE, RAID, AHCI), that will control hot-swap etc.
     
    Deadrum33, Mar 4, 2011
    #1344
  5. shaffaaf

    shaffaaf Regular member

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    i have never safely ejected my drives, for the years i have been using them. Not had a problem yet.
     
    shaffaaf, Mar 4, 2011
    #1345
  6. creaky

    creaky Moderator Staff Member

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    Well as i say, wait until there's important data on there one day and you lose it.. it only takes once :)
     
    creaky, Mar 4, 2011
    #1346
  7. shaffaaf

    shaffaaf Regular member

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    true say. I guess i can be ignortant till then.

    just bought a 16GB usb, dedicated to OS's. Installed win7's ISO to it. I finally do not need an optical drive.
     
    shaffaaf, Mar 4, 2011
    #1347
  8. sammorris

    sammorris Senior member

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    Nobody should ever have data on a removable disk that isn't backed up somewhere else. USB sticks are easily lost/damaged, and can also fail like any other device. Anyone who loses important data and doesn't have it backed up, deserves everything coming to them.
     
    sammorris, Mar 4, 2011
    #1348
  9. creaky

    creaky Moderator Staff Member

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    Bloody Windows 7, it lets me install a WMP54G then can't see my WPA2/AES network, only offers WPA Personal. Bag of crap!; ah well, off to google i go, if it won't work then XP goes back on there. I hope it's just a driver issue, (and its fixable), even my Puppy linux machines can cater for WPA2/AES.
    Pah, humbug, grumble grumble :p

    edit- i know what i didn't think of, Vista drivers, that should do it.
     
    Last edited: Mar 4, 2011
    creaky, Mar 4, 2011
    #1349
  10. Mr-Movies

    Mr-Movies Active member

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    It should be a driver issue I've run into that exact thing but it has been a while so I forget what I did exactly to remedy the problem. No need to go back to XP though.
     
    Mr-Movies, Mar 4, 2011
    #1350
  11. creaky

    creaky Moderator Staff Member

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    It's just me, i only like Win7 for it's prettyness, for actual use i much prefer XP (or linux more than XP even), so it's any excuse to put XP back on, but this machine is for my eldest so unfortunately it's prettyness is needed, just trying to find Vista drivers on that shocking new Linksys/Cisco site. Another case of prettyness over actual content, the old site was far better, not sure i've even got the right blinking drivers.
    I swear progress is a thing of the past, why does every company think we all have no brains and use Apple products. I can't imagine using/supporting only Microsoft products at work, it'd make me dumber than a box or rocks. Anyways - Arghhh..... back to google.

    edit- No, those Vista drivers were useless, back to Cisco's awful site. This is just annoying now.
    I have an idea, i'll boot the machine with a Puppy linux live cd, see what chipset the wifi card has, then go find Ralink drivers instead.
     
    Last edited: Mar 4, 2011
    creaky, Mar 4, 2011
    #1351
  12. omegaman7

    omegaman7 Senior member

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    I figured. :p

    MR-MOVIES, what do you mean attached to trash can? Because windows 7 seems to recognize removable storage. In that, when you delete things, it automatically goes to permanent deletion. With XP, this was not so.
     
    omegaman7, Mar 4, 2011
    #1352
  13. Mr-Movies

    Mr-Movies Active member

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    Nope, when you attach to Windows 7 it assumes files to go to the trash can with removable hdd's unless you turn that feature off, which I do.
     
    Mr-Movies, Mar 4, 2011
    #1353
  14. ddp

    ddp Moderator Staff Member

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    ddp, Mar 4, 2011
    #1354
  15. creaky

    creaky Moderator Staff Member

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    Thanks, that link got me further that the link i had before...trying that Vista driver now...
     
    creaky, Mar 4, 2011
    #1355
  16. theonejrs

    theonejrs Senior member

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    Oman7,
    Click on the little arrow thing in the taskbar (Safely Remove Hardware) and see if the drive shows. If it doesn't, don't try to remove it with the computer on, because it's not set up for hot swapping! I use the purple Sata ports on mine for eSata. They are already configured for hot swap! You won't blow the Sata port, but you very likely will lose the drive's contents!

    Russ
     
    Last edited: Mar 4, 2011
    theonejrs, Mar 4, 2011
    #1356
  17. creaky

    creaky Moderator Staff Member

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    Nope, the driver on there for Vista cause Win7 to BSOD. The cheek of it. Enough messing about, i'm restoring the machine back to XP using Acronis True Image. (We've been testing it on various linux and Windows servers with mixed results - some work fine, some crash, ie it crashes our company webserver. We've put a bigger CPU in the one machine but realised we can fit a bigger one still so we've got one coming in off ebay). Acronis is ok in XP, as i say it's so-so on some Windows servers, and it's definitely so-so on linux servers, and we have a mixed bag of linux distro's across our servers.

    edit- done, the restore took less than 5mins, XP it is again:)
     
    Last edited: Mar 4, 2011
    creaky, Mar 4, 2011
    #1357
  18. omegaman7

    omegaman7 Senior member

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    See, I have to be setup(Configured in the bios) for AHCI on my board. In doing that, ALL of my drives show up in there. If I accidentally click the wrong one, then I have to restart the computer. Kind of tedious if you ask me. Perhaps there's a workaround. Until then, I'll just set the bios for AHCI mode.
     
    omegaman7, Mar 4, 2011
    #1358
  19. creaky

    creaky Moderator Staff Member

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    I knew it, restored back to XP and wifi card won't 'see' WPA2. That'll be SP3. Tried uninstalling SP3 and lo and behold the PC is acting all wierd (had installed loads of stuff after SP3 and before i took the Acronis image so sort of expected this). Reinstall of XP (only up to SP2) from scratch coming up. The joy of noddy operating systems eh :)

    (we use SP3 on all new work machines, but i don't bother with it on any of my own. I installed it on both kids' new PC's - one of them locked up repeatedly with SP3 so had to reinstall from scratch, to SP2, and this one is the one that the WMP54G wouldn't work on earlier).
     
    Last edited: Mar 4, 2011
    creaky, Mar 4, 2011
    #1359
  20. Estuansis

    Estuansis Active member

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    For the record I have always just pulled my USB drives and over the course of 6 or 7 years and some 20 odd flash drives have never had a single problem yet. AFAIK the true danger was removing during a file transfer. It could say its done, but wait for the dialog to close before pulling. So it can potentially cause harm, but you can't convince me that it'll corrupt data if the drive is idle. Never seen it once.
     
    Estuansis, Mar 4, 2011
    #1360
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