My external hard drive has been making some very odd noises for a while and I’m looking for a good replacement. Your input would be appreciated. [more inside]
posted by The Lurkers Support Me in Email on Nov 18, 2009 - 12 answers

I have these two "folders" in my C drive that are just two of my external hard drives. I would either like them gone or to be given a really good reason to keep them. [more inside]
posted by theichibun on Jul 13, 2009 - 4 answers

There are currently 4 File Browsers open on my desktop, all displaying either the contents of my external hard drive or the folder where it's mounted (/media/). I didn't open them—they just showed up. This morning when I woke up there was 40+ File Browser windows open of the same. Another window just opened; it seems to occur at random intervals. I'm running Ubuntu Linux 8.10, wtf is causing this? [more inside]
posted by carsonb on Apr 2, 2009 - 11 answers

My hard drive is too big for your enclosure! My Thinkpad died. Fortunately, I think the hard drive is ok. I purchased a 2.5" external enclosure to try to recover the data from the 2.5" drive. It doesn't fit. What do I need? Details inside. [more inside]
posted by meantime on Feb 19, 2009 - 10 answers

How can I change the generic name "USB Mass Storage Device" in my Vista system tray "Safely Remove Hardware" dialog? [more inside]
posted by msbrauer on Dec 30, 2008 - 6 answers

Running XP on my computer, off of someone else's internal hard drive [more inside]
posted by senterstyle on Dec 3, 2008 - 10 answers

I'm using Terminal (Ubuntu 8.04x64) right now to overwrite a 500g external hd with random information. There's been no action aside from a blinking cursor (by itself on a line, not in front of any prompt) since I entered the command yesterday afternoon:
[sudo dd if=/dev/random of=/dev/sdc bs=8m]

I understand it's going to take a while to finish. In the meantime, is there any way to monitor the progress of the operation?
posted by carsonb on Nov 8, 2008 - 18 answers

What is the best solution for having a whole bunch of hard drives and being able to easily swap them around? [more inside]
posted by GleepGlop on Sep 7, 2008 - 11 answers

External hard showing "weird". Better known as, sharing an external/portable hard drive between osx and winxp. [more inside]
posted by jadepearl on Jun 23, 2008 - 10 answers

My external hard-drive's on the fritz. What can I do to make sure I get all my data off it before it goes? [more inside]
posted by djgh on Jun 3, 2008 - 5 answers

I think I'm finally switching to Ubuntu on my main machine. I have two 160GB external drives, currently both with NTFS, currently mirrored (by software, not a RAID). With what and how should I format/use these guys? [more inside]
posted by tmcw on Mar 14, 2008 - 8 answers

I can no longer open a number of raw and jpg files in a single folder on an external harddrive. What's going on? Is my harddrive about to die? [more inside]
posted by msbrauer on Feb 16, 2008 - 5 answers

What kind of transfer speeds should I be expecting from my new external Firewire 800 drive? [more inside]
posted by Venadium on Jan 29, 2008 - 10 answers

I'm looking for an external storage solution that will play nice with an XP Desktop and a Kubuntu laptop...preferably at the same time [more inside]
posted by Rallon on Dec 16, 2007 - 10 answers

Calling to the hive mind! Is anyone aware of a (reasonably priced (sub $150)) external hard drive (or, better, HDD enclosure) that meets the following specifications? [more inside]
posted by TrueVox on Dec 15, 2007 - 6 answers

Are there any particularly awesome external firewire hard drive enclosures that I should be aware about? [more inside]
posted by chunking express on Oct 29, 2007 - 7 answers

How do I connect my NTFS hard drive to my new mac? [more inside]
posted by smithmac_99 on Sep 26, 2007 - 5 answers

What do I need to know about hard drive enclosures? My computer (PC) died this morning and I want to pull out the 2 hard drives and use them as external drives for my new Mac. I don't know if they're FAT32 or NTFS. I don't know if they're IDE or SATA. How do I find out? Do I need to? A little background on my old PC. It was one of the first P4 3.0 PCs with hyperthreading technology. I've had it for ~4 years
posted by smithmac_99 on Aug 28, 2007 - 13 answers

OSXFileSharingFilter: I have a friend who's trying to make himself a great file server off an old iBook - and has hit a snag involving a MyBook external hard drive. The problem makes no sense to me, and my Google-fu as failed me once again. [more inside]
posted by plaidrabbit on Mar 11, 2007 - 7 answers

Why does the drive letter for my external hard drive keep changing? [more inside]
posted by Joleta on Feb 28, 2007 - 10 answers

Trouble with an external hard drive & it's USB connection, possibly. (details inside) [more inside]
posted by jhayes on Jan 21, 2007 - 6 answers

I have a hard disk that I pulled out of a dead computer. It has been formated and has data on it. Are there any external adapters that I can plug it into so that I can use it as an external drive?
posted by mtstover on Sep 30, 2006 - 13 answers

Where shall I shove a new HD? [more inside]
posted by ROU_Xenophobe on May 16, 2006 - 13 answers

Lacie hard drive problem - Mac OS Panther. For the past couple days, I was ripping CDs as MP3s via iTunes and writing them to my Lacie 160 Gig Firewire hard drive (the Porsche one). This morning, the drive "is unreadable by Mac OSX..." What gives? [more inside]
posted by jeff-o-matic on Jan 30, 2006 - 12 answers

I've just been given the task of buying an external hard drive for my work, and am looking for advice on which specifications I should pay attention to when comparing different options. The drive will contain data files, and the idea is that we'll run statistical analyses (using SPSS, SAS, R, etc.) on files that reside on the drive. The main feature I'm concerned about is speed -- I don't want the drive to slow down the analyses. But we won't be transferring large files to/from the drive very often, so transfer speed isn't important in that sense. Which features are most important for this purpose? [more inside]
posted by nixxon on Jul 15, 2005 - 17 answers

How robust/durable are LaCie firewire drives? [+] [more inside]
posted by psmealey on Feb 7, 2005 - 14 answers