Please help me find a router to make my parents' lives easier. I am looking for a wireless router that will allow me to connect to a printer and an external hard drive via USB. It doesn’t need to be wireless N (G is fine), but if it’s N it needs to be dual-band. Other than the Apple Airport Extreme with a USB hub attached, what wireless routers can do this? The models from Linksys with Storage Link and D-Link with Shareport seem to be able to connect to either a printer or a USB drive, but not both simultaneously. Any ideas would be greatly appreciated. [more inside]
posted by Dasein on Dec 3, 2009 - 9 answers

I am trying to recover data from a WD3200ME-01, a WD 320GB USB-powered drive but the physical drive does not have SATA or IDE connection - only a mini USB connection soldered to the circuit board - and the drive is not recognized via USB anymore. [more inside]
posted by dozo on Jul 16, 2009 - 9 answers

Why can't I boot my computer (even past BIOS) with a USB hard drive attached? [more inside]
posted by xmutex on Apr 27, 2009 - 11 answers

I'm hoping to use a portable harddrive with a USB storage device (Digital Audio Player, as it turns out) without a computer in between. Does such a product exist? Preferably at a non-exorbitant price? [more inside]
posted by JMOZ on Apr 7, 2009 - 14 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

I have two computer hard drives installed onto one machine, and no CD for the first hard drive. The computer doesn't recognize USB ports nor the DVD drive on one of the hard drives. How can I fix that? [more inside]
posted by magnoliasouth on Jul 23, 2008 - 4 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

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

Is my USB hard drive recoverable? Due to some bad wiring on my part, one of my USB ports rendered my external hard drive useless. [more inside]
posted by adverb on Sep 14, 2007 - 6 answers

Why won't "Instant Wireless Compact USB Adapter Configuration Utility" uninstall, and why does it seem to take up 14.2GB of my hard drive? [more inside]
posted by billtron on Nov 8, 2006 - 6 answers

LinuxN00bFilter: Linux and/or dual boot from external USB HD (not pen/flash drive, but a real hard drive) -- how? [more inside]
posted by treepour on Oct 1, 2006 - 5 answers

Linksys NSLU2 or ASUS WL-500G? I am looking for a wireless, cheap (around $100), Unix-based NAS solution that will let me plug in a couple of USB or SATA drives and do things like serve SSH and run BitTorrent. [more inside]
posted by gentle on Sep 19, 2006 - 8 answers

Is there a way to get a PowerPC Mac to boot off of an external USB hard drive? [more inside]
posted by John Kenneth Fisher on Sep 5, 2006 - 7 answers

My USB2 hard drive will only stay mounted if I keep accessing it. If I don't, within 5 hours or fewer, I can't access files on the drive or even do a directory listing. I can then unmount the HD, power cycle it, and it will mount again as if nothing had happened. If I keep accessing the disk, say by continuously playing an MP3 mix on it, the disk acts completely normal: uptime now (with MP3s playing) is something like 20 hours without the shadow of a problem. [more inside]
posted by rwhe on Apr 18, 2006 - 12 answers

How can I backup my USB memory stick automatically? [more inside]
posted by furtive on Apr 7, 2006 - 6 answers

Can you spin down a hard drive in an external USB or Firewire enclosure? [more inside]
posted by knave on Nov 25, 2005 - 10 answers

Aaauuuuuugh! Help me save year's worth of archiving work and my large music collection which I love too dearly to lose!--"The request could not be performed because of an I/O device error." [more inside]
posted by sourwookie on Oct 26, 2005 - 11 answers

I purchased a 160GB external LaCie USB 2.0 drive last month from CompUSA, and today it quit working. I have an iMac G5 running OS X 10.3.8, which told me the drive could not be recognized, and whenever I turn on the drive, it gives me a pulsating screeching sound as it tries to access itself. I called LaCie, who says its a hard drisk mechanism failure (read: "our shit crashed and lost your data") and will repair the drive, but everything on it is lost unless I recover it beforehand somehow. DriveSavers is going to cost me some $2,000 or so which is outrageous, considering I'm a college student, and the drive was investment enough itself. It has some 40GB of music, and almost 100GB of video -- I'm looking for a service that can recover my data cheaply, and without voiding LaCie's warranty would be a plus. Does anyone know of any alternate solutions, have you heard of this happening to someone else or has it happened to you? WTF?
posted by jruckman on Feb 28, 2005 - 11 answers

WindowsFilter: is there a way to use a (USB 2.0) hard drive that is formated as HFS Journaled (MacOS X) under WindowsXP? I've tried the otherwise excellent MacDrive and it can't handle it.
posted by symbebekos on Jan 1, 2005 - 4 answers

External USB Hard Drive FAT32 corruption via Mac OS 9! Help me Obi-Wan Kenobe! (More inside) [more inside]
posted by loquacious on Dec 21, 2004 - 1 answer

(Lost Data FIlter)
I attempted to partition my Maxtor 60 GB HDD earlier, while I had a 40 gb Maxtor external USB 2 drive plugged in. What I'm afraid happened is that when the computer rebooted, the drive letters change and Partition Magic 8 was going to work on the external drive.
[more inside] [more inside]
posted by Evstar on Nov 17, 2004 - 6 answers

What's the best way to make a perfect mirror of my computer's hard drive? (more inside) [more inside]
posted by luser on Jul 30, 2004 - 7 answers

MP3-playing car stereos are ubiquitous. So where are the car stereos with a USB 2.0 port on the front that allow you to jack in a drive of whatever size you want? Are there unsurmountable technical difficulties with this? Anybody know of any hacks along these lines? [more inside]
posted by stupidsexyFlanders on Jul 9, 2004 - 12 answers

Yet Another Hard Drive Failure: My laptop started hanging periodically, and eventually stopped booting. Suspecting a hard drive failure, I swapped drives, and sure enough, it works fine now. Except, of course, for the old hard drive. I've put that in a USB enclosure and I've been able to recover some of the data in fits and starts. However, it continues to lock sporadically while the data is being read, and XP will occasionally drop the drive, no longer showing it in explorer. Is there a better way to recover my data, given the inability to stay connected to it via USB? [more inside]
posted by monju_bosatsu on Apr 20, 2004 - 8 answers

Large external drive on ancient laptop: I've got a 160 gig USB drive I'm trying to access from a laptop running Windows ME. [more inside]
posted by muckster on Mar 2, 2004 - 13 answers