External Hard drive for Vista 64

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Sirboy - 23 Jan 2008 18:07 GMT

I'm a newbie to Vista and was hoping to find some help.

I have Vista Ultimate 64 installed on my new pc (AMD Athlon64 X2 6000+
processor, Asus M2N-E mobo, 4 X 1gb Kingston pc2-6400 ram, WD 500gb
SATAII hard drive, Asus GeForce 8500GT Silent 512mb video card, Antec
Sonata III 500W case, LG 20X DVD+- drive).

I wanted to buy an external hard drive to transfer my family pics and
vids from my XP box to my Vista box.

Been reading about some external hard drives not working with Vista
x64. I've also read that I might ned to re-install Vista with the
external hard drive connected.

Can anyone recommend an external hard drive that will work with Vista
x64? Need at least 250 gb hard drive but maybe around 500-750 would be
optimal (wife takes lots of pics/vids of the kid :)).

Thanks in advance!

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Colin Barnhorst - 23 Jan 2008 18:25 GMT

I know of no reason why you would have to reinstall Vista just because you
attached an external hard drive. Your mobo does not have an external eSATA
port or an external SATA enclosure would be the way to go. Otherwise buy an
extenal usb hard drive enclosure and something like a Seagate 7200.10 250GB
or 500GB drive and assemble it (easy). There should be nothing else you
have to do but power it up and plug it into a usb port.

I recommend Newegg for the components or for a pre-assembled drive.

> I'm a newbie to Vista and was hoping to find some help.
>
[quoted text clipped - 15 lines]
>
> Thanks in advance!

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Sirboy - 23 Jan 2008 20:57 GMT

Hi Colin,

Thanks for the reply. The re-installation of Vista comment was meant
for Vista to recognize an IDE drive that I pulled from my XP box. I read
that when you install Vista on a box with SATA drives only and then add
and IDE drive after installing Vista, that Vista doesn't install the IDE
drivers. I'm getting my info mixed up after reading too much :o.

Is there an advantage to buying an internal IDE drive and sticking it
into a hdd enclosure as oppose to just buying an external hard drive?

Thanks,
Vince

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Colin Barnhorst - 23 Jan 2008 21:43 GMT

First of all I would not buy an IDE drive. I would buy a SATA drive for the
same money. It is easy to buy a SATA enclosure that supports both SATA and
USB 2.0 cables and have the flexibility of using the set with your next
computer's eSATA port (the transfer rate is more than 7 times faster than
with usb2) as well as with a usb port on your present machine.

The IDE controller is in firmware on your motherboard. There are no drivers
that you would install for it. In any case, the drive will not be seen as
an IDE drive by your computer when it is mounted in a usb enclosure. It
will be seen by the computer as a usb mass storage device. The type of
drive does not matter to the computer when mounted that way. It is the
drive enclosure has the contoller in it and that is when the type of drive
matters.

The problem I think you are describing concerning mixing PATA (IDE) and SATA
drives only pertained to installing Vista on a machine that had both SATA
and PATA drives internally. Vista Setup preferred to write the BDC store on
the PATA drive regardless of which drive was used as "C:". The advice was
to force the BCD store to be written to the C: drive by disconnecting the
PATA drive before installation. Once Vista was installed without a PATA
drive, the PATA drive could be connected again without any further issues.

Since a drive in an external usb drive enclosure is not using your
computer's internal IDE or SATA controllers but simply transferring data
over the usb bus it makes no difference to the computer what the drive is
inside the enclosure.

> Hi Colin,
>
[quoted text clipped - 9 lines]
> Thanks,
> Vince

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Sirboy - 23 Jan 2008 22:29 GMT

Colin Barnhorst;583630 Wrote:

> First of all I would not buy an IDE drive. I would buy a SATA drive for
> the
[quoted text clipped - 59 lines]
> > > --
> > > Sirboy > >

Thanks for your help. I knew that I came to the right place. I'll
probably go out and get the following:

Vantec Nexstar 3 (NST-360SU-BK) 3.5" SATA to eSATA/USB2.0 HDD External
Enclosure Black

Western Digital WD4000KS 400GB 16MB SATA

Regards

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Colin Barnhorst - 23 Jan 2008 23:15 GMT

That'll sure work. I have a Vantec that works fine with Vista. Be sure to
check your machine's connector for type and the back of the Vantec too so
that you get the right cable. There "I" to "I" and "I" to "L" types.

> Colin Barnhorst;583630 Wrote:
>> First of all I would not buy an IDE drive. I would buy a SATA drive for
[quoted text clipped - 70 lines]
>
> Regards

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Sirboy - 23 Jan 2008 21:45 GMT

Colin Barnhorst;583411 Wrote:

> I know of no reason why you would have to reinstall Vista just because
> you
[quoted text clipped - 8 lines]
>
> I recommend Newegg for the components or for a pre-assembled drive.

btw, I have an eSATA port on my Antec Sonata III case. Does that mean I
can use it?

Thanks,
Vince

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Colin Barnhorst - 23 Jan 2008 22:11 GMT

Boy Oh Boy it sure does! You can have nearly 8 times the transfer rate that
way over using a usb port. Just be sure to get a SATAII drive and a SATA
enclosure (and the right cable of course).

Something a lot of folks don't seem to have realized yet is that unlike usb
ports, drives connected to eSATA ports are bootable drives. I boot Vista
x86 and Vista x64 on my test box from external SATA enclosures. Great way
to do beta testing, which is what I did.

> Colin Barnhorst;583411 Wrote:
>> I know of no reason why you would have to reinstall Vista just because
[quoted text clipped - 15 lines]
> Thanks,
> Vince

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Sirboy - 24 Jan 2008 17:07 GMT

Hi Colin, thanks for your advice. I got the Vantec enclosure and a
Western Digital WD5000AAKS 500GB 16MB SATAII hard drive.

The combo worked like a charm :D. I had to set the hard drive jumper
setting to SATA150 for the eSATA to work.

On Vista, the drive was recognized immediately and I could see in my
computer. But on my XP box I had to use partition magic to partition and
format the drive first.

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Colin Barnhorst - 24 Jan 2008 17:34 GMT

Glad its working for you.

> Hi Colin, thanks for your advice. I got the Vantec enclosure and a
> Western Digital WD5000AAKS 500GB 16MB SATAII hard drive.
[quoted text clipped - 5 lines]
> computer. But on my XP box I had to use partition magic to partition and
> format the drive first.

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accessteam - 22 May 2008 19:06 GMT

Good discussion but there is a caveat you have not mentioned. The
software used to backup to the WD does NOT work with vista 64. All the
neat WD features (Backup Anywhere, etc.) fail on a 64 bit system.

I am now looking for a drive AND its associated software that works
with vista 64. Any suggestions?

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Colin Barnhorst - 23 May 2008 03:01 GMT

Buy the drive and software separately. I use Acronis True Image Home
edition for Vista Ultimate x64 and Vista Home Premium x64.

> Good discussion but there is a caveat you have not mentioned. The
> software used to backup to the WD does NOT work with vista 64. All the
> neat WD features (Backup Anywhere, etc.) fail on a 64 bit system.
>
> I am now looking for a drive AND its associated software that works
> with vista 64. Any suggestions?

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accessteam - 23 May 2008 12:58 GMT

Thanks, I just found Acronis as well. It is not the easiest software to
understand but it seems to work ok. I plan to write a backup stategy
and then try to implement it in Acronis. Wish me luck.

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