jema
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Plug and play like heckAm I missing a trick here?
I have just plugged a new USB hard drive into XP.
At which point it was seen but did not appear in My Computer or the program that I am going to use it with.
To make it appear, I did the following:
Goto Control Panel.
Goto Administrative Tools
Goto Computer Management
Goto Disk Management
Note I am now in a dialog where I can wreck my PC.
The disk appears here unitialized. If you right click (and there is no indication what to do) on the big partition area, you get no option to initialize, if you click on the left hand area you finally find initialize.
Is this crazy or what?
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Northern_Lad
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That does sound week. Was it not listed under the USB devices?
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jema
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It was listed as a mass storage device and from there you could access loads of crap about the driver, but there were no options that I could see to initialize the thing 
In my struggle to find somewhere to intialise I saw tons of dialogs that I don't think any user would normally need to use, but the things you plainly will need are often hidden.
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kevin.vinke
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If you havenīt done it already I would leave it plugged in and do a complete reboot and see if windows recognises it properly then. Some drives require a usb driver.
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jema
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On a reboot it is initialized and visible where I want to see it.
But it is not under "My Computer".
If I did actually want to partition this disk, is there any where other than the deeply nested dialog of the first post where I would be prompted to do this?
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Barefoot Andrew
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Win XP and 2K seem to recognise most USB storage devices, but I've also observed situations when a new device isn't recognised and Windows makes a balls-up of "installing" the device 
A.
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jema
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Just looking at my windows control panel, and I see icons for:
Java - just what the heck would Joe blogg want to play about with those settings.
Broadcom control suite/network connections/network setup wizard/wireless network setup/wireless configuration utility/internet options/firewall - That's 7 icons for mucking around with my network connection, 8 if you include the modem icon 
I could go on. It must take serious effort to create a system as over complex as this.
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dpack
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is this xp pro ?
mine tells me too much sometimes
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jema
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It is XP home.
But this is a common issue with both Linux and XP/Vista. Maybe it is better on a Mac?
For the record Linux is not much better with the USB disk case. You get easy access to a dialog giving you 5 things you never want to do with a disk, and no access to format the thing
Ubuntu does not even install the partioner by default, when you do install it, you can at least find it which beats XP, but once again you are in a press any button to blow up your computer scenario.
Neither operating system seems to have any concept that your systems disk should be bolted down off limits, and that a USB disk is something you are likely to be more aggressive with.
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dougal
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| jema wrote: | | ... Maybe it is better on a Mac? ... |
Are you weakening? 
(BTW Mac mini for Ģ350 inc VAT & delivery 12 mth warranty as a "refurb" - 1.83ghz Core 2 Duo...)
Generally, show a Mac something that it can recognise as a storage device, and it'll try and mount it. (Yes, NL, I know...) And it can mount a fair variety of file systems.
But if it can't make sense of what it finds, it'll offer to format it for you. (IMHO, there ought to be about 3 - not just 1 - confirmation dialogs...)
However, if you want to do anything at all unusual (like partitioning a disk), then you can cancel that format and take a trip to the Disk Utility program... Its a menu option on the system installer dvd, and normally lives inside /Applications/Utilities
There's only a couple of quirks. Maybe the biggest has to do with the PPC/Intel difference. AFAIK, its only with 10.5 that it becomes possible (again) to have a Universal external startup (boot) disk. And that had to do with the hidden detail of the partition map scheme... The Intels needed their own partition map style for a startup disk (which they get on their internals) BUT (to keep it easy) the default map on an external was PPC-style. Sure, Disk Utility would let you do it differently, but the KISS default keeps it as simple as possible.
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jema
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To carry on the theme, I note if I have a formatted USB drive connected, then right clicking on the drive in "My computer" gives me the option to format the drive, but no option to safely remove it To remove the drive you have to find another dialog entirely.
Lets see now, which should have priority? letting you format an already formated drive or letting you remove it?
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dougal
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| jema wrote: | To carry on the theme, I note if I have a formatted USB drive connected, then right clicking on the drive in "My computer" gives me the option to format the drive, but no option to safely remove it To remove the drive you have to find another dialog entirely.
Lets see now, which should have priority? letting you format an already formated drive or letting you remove it? |
Are you convincing yourself to get a Mac?
No contextual menu Format command, but an "Eject" for things like my usb flash "thumb" drive.
I never really liked the metaphor of dragging a drive/partition to the Trash to unmount it... OS X has improved that, in that when you are dragging any drive icon the trash wastebasket changes to an "eject" symbol. (And it simply silently ignores attempts to manually eject the boot volume. )
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Jonnyboy
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| jema wrote: | , but no option to safely remove it To remove the drive you have to find another dialog entirely?
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Icon on the bottom right of the lower taskbar?
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jema
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| Jonnyboy wrote: | | jema wrote: | , but no option to safely remove it To remove the drive you have to find another dialog entirely?
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Icon on the bottom right of the lower taskbar? |
I know where it is, and I also note in my case it came up with three unidentified USB devices that it invited to to select, at which point you get the real dialog to stop the device.
I am not exactly a beginner here, I'm simply getting more incensed about the stupidity of things.
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Jonnyboy
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Just trying to be helpful.
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sean
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Well don't. He's busy being cross.
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Jonnyboy
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| sean wrote: | | He's busy being cross. |
quite, it's getting rather popular.
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