FAT32 40GB Portable HD Didn't Work

[Embalmer]

Originally Posted by CamaroSkooter

Hmm, I hope you get the voltage/amperage correct, cause I've fried electronics before because I didn't get the right type of power supply.

Good luck

5V. Not sure what the current is...but oh well

Either way, I will report my success or failure.

[levi1922]

i think it would be over all easier to get a flash drive,
and you can get a 8 gig that will hold plenty of songs for not that much money.

[MTron]

Originally Posted by Embalmer

5V. Not sure what the current is...but oh well

Either way, I will report my success or failure.

i have never seen a laptop hd that draws more then 10 watts, so i think if you can supply at least 2 amps at 5 volts u should be good to go!

As for why this is happening in the first place....well, power would be my first idea...after that...could be an incompatibility with the ATA chipset in the external...try another drive perhaps??? As well, maybe you should try changing the allocation unit size when formatting, try using all default setting when u format it, including the allocation size, if that doesnt work try 4096 bytes, which is a common size (dunno if its the default size tho...might be the same! lol)

also, try putting the music into a directory instead of just in the root of the drive, ie put all the music in a folder called music for ex e:\\Music\all ur stuff

[SemperFi]

Originally Posted by levi1922

i think it would be over all easier to get a flash drive,
and you can get a 8 gig that will hold plenty of songs for not that much money.

Sandisk Cruzer - 16 gb for under 30 with free shipping.

http://www.amazon.com/SanDisk-Cruzer...MFVS4E8H3FJMMY

knock it outta the park with this sweet wallet sized 320gb Western Digital HDD. Its small and brand new, takes less power than the clunky old disks $70

http://www.amazon.com/Western-Digita...0883879&sr=1-1

[UCF w00t]

Originally Posted by SemperFi

knock it outta the park with this sweet wallet sized 320gb Western Digital HDD. Its small and brand new, takes less power than the clunky old disks $70

http://www.amazon.com/Western-Digita...0883879&sr=1-1

That's what he's trying (different brand/size but same idea). And it's not working.

[cyberbro]

I have a radical idea? See what the owners Manual says!

I'm sure it will have a list of what will work and will not work in the USB?

[franknbeans]

owners manual. . . hell that's the same as asking a guy to read the book for the xbox game he just bought or to read the directions before putting that desk together.

[trudawg660]

i don't own that much music i think its 36GB am just going to buy a 64GB flash drive

[etrigan]

Any new news? I've actually bought a WD 320GB drive just for the car. Now, I may have to try something different.

As a guess, I would stick to FAT32 and avoid NTFS. One thing that you might need to do is do multipule partitions and drop no more than 10,000 songs on each partition.

[levi1922]

Originally Posted by franknbeans

owners manual. . . hell that's the same as asking a guy to read the book for the xbox game he just bought or to read the directions before putting that desk together.

haha, thats is one of the things i am looking forward to! i always read them!

[Embalmer]

Didn't get the external power supply hooked up yet... will try to do that soon.

My Sandisk 16gb thumbstick/flash drive works great though..... Just FYI.

[Vole182]

Originally Posted by CamaroSkooter

And I believe once you format it to NTFS, you can't go back to FAT32...

Nope you can switch formats anytime you would like to. Just make sure you back it up because it wipes the data on there to ones and zero heaven.

In fact I would recommend that he tries NTFS for the format mainly because the pro's to NTFS was that it loads smaller files 256Mb's and smaller very quickly (which is why most OS's now install on NTFS and windows 7 will install NTFS5) And considering each music file being what 5-9Mb's a pop? NTFS will be the best for your music drive. But if you are going to be swapping out DVD's or something bigger FAT32 would be the one to use. For moving larger files like 4GB's of a DVD... It is much more efficient to run FAT32 if you are moving large amounts of data from one to the other because it shortens load times.

Whatever i'm a geek! So shoot me!

If you have any questions or need any help I do this type of thing all day long for work so shoot me a PM and i'll do my best to help ya.

[Rogue Leader]

I didn't think this would work... it seems like it would be a low power USB, hard drives stretch the limits of juice from a PC/Notebook's USB port.