Questions tagged [external-hard-drive]
A hard drive designed to be connected to a computer via an external interface such as USB, eSATA, Thunderbolt, or IEEE 1394.
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How much time until an unused hard drive loses its data?
Do you guys know how much time needs to pass until the data stored on a hard drive starts to degrade?
To keep the data intact for long periods of time, I heard you need to periodically rewrite it on ...
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Why is my USB drive showing corrupted data when plugged as an internal SATA drive?
I have a 3TB Seagate Backup Plus Desktop USB 3.0 drive, which works fine when in its enclosure, but when I get it off its enclosure and directly plug it as an internal SATA drive, it's just not ...
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Can I install Windows OS (Windows 7) on a removable USB hard drive? [duplicate]
I wanted to take a sneak peek at Windows 7 so I thought of installing it. I have Windows Vista on my laptop which came pre-installed with it. I didn't want to mess with it.
So I created a partition (...
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Windows OS on external hard drive
Is it possible to install Windows OS to plug and play storage devices such as external hard drives, HDD enclosures (with SATA hard drives), USB flashdrives and the likes? What OS's? And if it's ...
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Install Windows XP to USB Hard Drive and Run from It
I wanted to know if there was a way (that worked!) to both Install and Run Windows XP Pro from a USB 2.0 connected Hard Drive. My system does allow to boot from external usb hard drive, but when I ...
Stan
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Windows does not mount USB NTFS superfloppy
I have a Transcend Storejet external USB hard disk. This is not an SSD, but a mechanical disk with rotating plates. I have formatted the whole disk, without partitioning, as NTFS. I have used mkntfs ...
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How can a MBR formatted hard drive exceed 1.81 TiB capacity?
I recently purchased an external disk drive with 3 terabytes (2.72 TiB) of storage capacity.
Now according to Wikipedia's article on MBR, the maximum addressable storage space on a disk formatted ...
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Why can't I copy a 7 GB file to an external USB HD with 120 GB free?
Yes, why can't I?
I was stashing away some old photography backup zips last night. I could copy 4 of my > 1 GB backup zips to my external USB connected hard-drive when I got the error message "Cannot ...
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How to copy files to read-only NTFS hard drive on a Mac?
I want to copy my some files from Mac (Macbook-Air) to an USB external hard drive, formatted as NTFS.
How is it possible? Because when I do copy my files from the Mac and go to paste them on the ...
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Automatically mount external drives to /media/LABEL on boot without a user logged in?
This question is similar, but kind of the opposite of what I want. I want external USB drives to be mounted automatically at boot, without anyone logged in, to locations like /media/<label>.
I ...
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USB stick appearing as hard disk drive, not removable storage device
I just plugged in a very simple 1GB USB stick from the office in hopes of making it a Fedora Live USB stick. For that to work, I need a removable storage device, or else it won't appear in LiveUSB ...
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How to setup Windows from an external hard drive?
Is it possible to install Windows from an external hard drive?
I have Windows XP installed on my laptop, and I want to remove it and install Windows 7.
My Windows 7 installation is in an .iso format ...
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RAW to NTFS (Data already recovered so not important)
Recently something went wrong with my external WD passport. It is not accesible anymore in Win 7 and the type is now currently RAW. I recovered all the data so formatting it is no issue.
I tried ...
user62234
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Please explain wasted space on an exFAT formatted external hard drive [duplicate]
I recently bought a 750 GB 2.5" hard drive and put it in an external enclosure. It has Advanced Format Technology (AFT), but I use Windows 7, so I assumed I would be safe.
I decided to try exFAT, ...
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How to run Windows 10 from an external hard drive? [duplicate]
I am currently able to boot from an external drive or multiboot USB. Taking this concept one step further, I have 3 questions:
1) Is it possible to install and run Windows 10 on a portable external ...
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Mount and dismount hard drive through a script/software [duplicate]
is there a way to mount and dismount a connected harddrive through a script or a simple utility software in Windows 8.1?
Basically, I have a hard drive in the ultrabay slot of my ThinkPad (instead of ...
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Is it possible to set the logical sector size of a USB hard disk drive?
I have two supposedly identical 3TB Western Digital USB hard disk drives. One contains nearly the full 3TB of data. I want the other to be a backup of that data. There are lots of small files, so ...
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Hard Drive Failure? Cannot run CHKDSK. Recovery?
I have WD My Book Essential 3TB external drive for more than 2 years now. It worked fine until about a month ago when it stopped being recognized. After extensive googling, I ran chkdsk /r on it and ...
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Access to a disk drive using volume ID instead of a drive letter in Windows
Can I access to a disk drive using volume ID instead of a drive letter in Windows? It could be very useful for external drives.
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Getting Rid of Software Records for Software installed on an external disk?
So I'm cleaning out an old computer, and several of the programs it thinks it has were actually installed on an old drive, that's now gone. For some of them, it prompts to get rid of them because it ...
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Cross-platform usable filesystem with large file support
What is the best filesystem to use cross-platform (Linux, Windows, OS X) which supports disk sizes of at least 2TB and file sizes >4GB?
I'm planning to use it on a USB drive on different computers.
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Is it possible to check an external USB Drive health (SMART)? [closed]
Is it possible to check an external USB Drive health (SMART)?
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How do I make an external hard drive keep the same drive letter permanently?
I have a desktop PC (2002 vintage) running Windows XP that I turn on about two or three times per week. I have a mains powered 250 GB Western Digital hard disk connected to it via USB. I ...
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Newly formatted (NTFS) external hard drive already has 'Used space'. What determines the used space's amount? Is it correlated to the HD's capacity?
I just bought a new external hard drive (WD Elements - 1 TB). In a PC with Windows 7, I formatted it by Right-clicking the drive > Format (Quick Format - NTFS) before using it and, and then checked ...
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How do I remove a MyBook's "WD SmartWare" virtual CD from my desktop?
I recently got a Western Digital MyBook external hard drive to enable Time Machine. It has its software installed on a "virtual CD" called "WD SmartWare" which shows up on the desktop any time the ...
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How to mount and unmount hard drives under Windows (the unix way)
On my work computer I have two USB hard drives that I use rarely. They have a power save mode that sends them into sleep after a couple of minutes of them being idle.
Whenever I open a context menu ...
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Is time a substitute for Safely Remove Hardware?
In Windows 7, before unplugging an external hard disk or flash drive, you are ideally supposed to use the Safely Remove Hardware option to make sure there aren't any writes still pending.
Suppose it ...
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Why Do Some USB Cables Have Two USB Connectors at the End?
I've recently bought an external hard drive enclosure and it had arrived with an USB cable, with one USB connector on one side and two on the other. Why do some USB cables have two connectors while ...
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How to read and write Mac drives on Windows
I have some external hard drives that are Mac OS Extended (Journaled) formatted. What software can you recommend for working with those drives when under Windows? Do you have any experience with this?
...
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Windows 10: No option to Eject External HARD DRIVE (NOT USB Stick)
When I plug in my external hard drive (again, NOT USB stick), and right click on the icon in This PC, there is no option to eject the drive.
There is a system tray option to "safely eject" it, but ...
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What is the difference between SATA and eSATA?
Is the following correct?
eSATA is the same as SATA, except that the cable plug has a slightly different shape, but as far as the electrical signal goes, it's the exact same thing. In theory, if you ...
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Can't read External Hard Drive anymore!
I've had a WD external hard drive for a while, all of a sudden a couple of weeks ago it stopped working.
When I plug it in, windows prompts me to "Format Disk",
I also tried it from linux mint, but ...
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How to connect Western Digital "My passport" using other means?
I have a Western Digital My Passport 500Gb external Harddrive where the USB connection on the drive seems to have worn out. I am trying to retrieve the data for a friend.
Here is an image of the ...
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Right click on mouse crashes Windows Explorer
Whenever I click the right button on my USB mouse or trackpad of my laptop, Windows Explorer will crash and restart. All windows opened will close.
I am using Windows 7 Enterprise. Has anyone else ...
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External hard drive and Recycle Bin behavior
When my Seagate external hard drive is plugged in, its $RECYCLE.BIN folder automatically contains all the files contained in the Recycle Bin of the PC. Is it true that actually we don't have any ...
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How to detect if a USB port is 3.0 or 2.0?
I have a Toshiba Canvio 3.0 external HDD. It has USB 3.0. It flashes blue if you connect it to a USB 3.0 port. If it is a 2.0 port, the light becomes white.
Yesterday, I plugged it in and the light ...
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What is the tolerable magnetic field (in Tesla) for a hard disk?
I was wondering what would be the safest magnetic field for a hard drive so that the data inside it is safe and not wiped off?
For example I have a 2.1 home theatre system and when I take my android ...
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Turn off (spin down) external (USB) HDD on Linux
I have an external HDD connected through USB. There is that Gnome utility called "Disks". When working the disk is on the list on the left. If I click on "turn off" button, the disk disappear from the ...
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Can I run a virtual machine from external USB drive?
A question regarding how to setup my VMs on internal/external disks. First, here's my setup:
Host OS: Windows 10
Processor: i7 5600U
RAM: 16 GB
VMware Workstation Player (Licensed)
I have 3 VMs so ...
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Can't change permission/ownership/group of external hard drive on Ubuntu
I have an external hard drive connected to my Linux box. I wanted to setup a web server to access files on it, but the permission on all files and directories on the drive are rwx for the owner which ...
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How to access an APFS volume on Windows machine
I have a Lacie 4TB external HDD which have 1.5 TB of data but I am not able to access it as it looks like the the file system of the volume which contains my data is Apple's File System and I cant ...
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Sync two external harddrives?
A little mishap happened earlier today and i am thinking i should have a copy of my external harddrive since 10% of it is very valuable. What is the best solution to keep two external harddrive in ...
user3109
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SSD in external USB 3.0 closure not recognized as SSD
I've brought an SSD and external closure that supports UASP and USB 3.0.
The drive is recognized and the speed is ok. But the drive is recognized as normal hard drive by Windows (8.1). I.e. when I ...
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How to find out WHEN a usb disk was removed?
I have got an external disk probably stolen from my computer at work. Is there any way to see in some system logs at what time this device was removed / unmounted? My operating system is Windows 7 (...
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Are all hard disks suitable for external enclosure?
I'm looking at replacing the actual disk in my external hard disk (USB) with one with higher storage capacity. Based on the connectors, it seems to take any 3.5 SATA drive, but I wonder if all disks ...
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How can I redirect my iTunes library to an external hard drive?
Right now, I have all my music on my internal hard drive, but it is running out of space.
So, I bought an external hard drive, copied all my music over and went into the advanced preferences in ...
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How to quickly and effectively wipe a Win7 x64 hard drive
I have a Windows 7 Enterprise x64 system and need to wipe the 1.5TB hard disk drive quickly and effectively. Quick, I guess, is a relative term; so more quickly than I've seen with some wipe utilities ...
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Seagate Expansion Hard Drive (Portable) is not recognized By Windows!
My Seagate Expansion Hard Drive is not recognized by windows. When I connect it to the computer I do not see "Mass Storage Device" Under "Universal Serial Bus Controller". I already check the ...
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Disable USB drives during boot up?
I have 2 external USB harddrives that are on/active during the boot process. I believe that Windows7 is looking at those drives while booting, which is causes bootup to take longer. Is there a way ...
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Password Protecting Partitions on an External Hard Drive
I'm looking forward to the suggestions I get back on this one.
Here's the rundown:
I'd like to have an external hard drive to use as a backup for my household. Ideally I'd like to be able to take ...
