A friend of mine sent me a 20 gig external drive so I could copy my files to it before I reformat. After I reformat, can I leave my external runtimes on it and access them from poser?

I've been running Poser 6 and about 10 runtime folders off a 120gig usb drive no problem.

Since my new external drive is faster than my old internal drive somehow Poser runs much faster since I have moved it and my runtimes to the external USB disc.

omg! Thank you for that! This is a USB one too. I can't believe that I can actually free up so much of my laptop's hard drive. I find that when I have at least 18 gigs free (I have a 40 gig HD), that my computer runs so much better. It's currently got 13 gigs free and it's sluggish and slow and freezes up. I'm thrilled to no end!!!!!!!!!!!

Oh, don't forget 1 thing. Make sure your USB drive is on before you load poser. If not, you'll have to enter the runtimes again. Found that out the hard way,

Copy the whole poser folder onto the hard drive, then you'll just need to enter the serial after your format....Did the same myself and now just run it from the external...Steve

well, from what i understand if your runtimes are on a diffrent drive from your primary (c:) drive it will run faster because it can use swap space at the same time as it accesses your rutimes.

Although Poser is on my PC's internal (120-GB) HD, all my runtimes are on an external (also 120-GB) USB drive. Never had any problems with it so far.

I run Poser PP with my huge PP runtime on an external Firewire harddrive. I run P6 on the harddrive and point to the external Firewire harddrive runtimes. FireWire is faster than USB, but I can run both. I have 2 FireWaire Ports and 2 USB. bB

Basically, Poser does a lot of arm-wrestling just to stay afloat. If you keep the program separate from the data, consistently, it will run much faster. And if you keep everything external to your OS ... even better. If your drive lights start to churn, you need another drive.

Im waiting for my Poser 6 to arrive, when it does will I be able to install it in its entirety onto an external USB hard-drive and still access it from my PC?
Or is it better just to put the runtimes there and leave Poser on my main drive?

It'll work great doing it like that Ian, i have p4 and p6 on an external drive.........Steve

Ok, a word about USB Drives...my 120GB Seagate has gone toes up on me stranding me with 90GB of data on the drive and no way to access it. I think my problem is that I left it on all the time, but according to the tech folks at my university where I teach it's not all that unusual for the drive motors or microchips to go out on USB drives. Be careful, don't put anything that you can't afford to lose out there. Just another cautionary tale, and, as I tell my students, worth twice what was paid for it...

Well, I already ran into some trouble... and I don't know how to fix it :( Yesterday it was working just peachy fine. I managed to get all of my files transferred over to the external drive and did my reformat. Today I login to move files from the external drive to the laptop hard drive. I got a message from the external drive saying that the device was a high speed USB one and required to be used in a high speed USB host, and I was asked to search my computer for such a host. An automatic search showed that this computer doesn't have any high speed USB ports. I was given the option to continue and told that the device would not work at optimum speed. I accepted that. I managed to move all my folders back to the right place and left the poser runtimes on the external drive. And I had no difficulty in doing it. It was terrific. I noticed that the drive itself is 19 gigs, and with my runtimes on there, there should have been 8 gigs of free space... but it was only showing 4.2 gigs of free space. I decided to check to see if there were any hidden folders. There was one folder. I decided to defrag that drive as I had moved all kinds of stuff on and off of it. So I started the defrag. It looked like defrag was moving files that were no longer there. I saw that it was hung up on "WS_FTP95".. which wasn't even on the drive. So I decided to open that hidden folder (I didn't touch the files... I just opened the folder to see what was in there). There were a bunch of other folders called "Resore....etc". Which is probably where all the missing gigs of space were allocated to. It looked like Defrag was hung up on moving that one file... so I cancelled the defrag and tried to exit. My whole system froze up solid. After 5 minutes it was clear that the only way to unfreeze it (ctrl alt del wouldn't even work), was to shut off the computer.... so I pressed "OFF". When I logged back on, I got the device notification for the drive again, and the popup window about the high speed stuff. Only this time when I clicked it, it showed me my 2 USB ports and told me that there were no High Speed ports on this machine. I clicked "OK", and the device notification icon in the try disappeared. I decided to try Admin Tools and "Computer Management" to search for the device... but I can't access computer management now when the external drive is plugged into my USB port. And now when it's plugged into the laptop, I get the following message: "The specified I/O operation on DeviceHarddisk1DR2 was not completed before the time-our period expired. Cancel Try Again Continue" I've tried Cancel, Try again, and Continue... and none of them allow me to use the external drive. The drive isn't visible in my computer, and there is no longer an icon in the tray. I've tried everything I know... shutting off the drive... unplugging it. Turning it on and then plugging it in. Plugging it in and then turning it on. Rebooting the laptop with the device plugged in and turned on. Rebooting the laptop with the device plugged in but not turned on... etc. I still can't get the drive back online so I can use it :( If anyone has any ideas... can you please PM me? I"m at my wits end here :(

Acadia, have you solved this problem yet? If I understand your post correctly, you have formatted your system drive and reinstalled an OS (which OS, BTW?). Did you install specific chipset/USB2 drivers? This may be necessary to get your system to run all hardware optimally, or even see it.

I was able to visit my USB drive for around half an hour yesterday. I'd left it off for over a week, and thought I'd just see if it were home, and after running all the way through its file structure I had half an hour of file transfers to the laptop before it quit recognizing its own file structure again. At least I think I can start backing things up to CD now...

No. Not yet. Have no clue what is wrong. Something must have gotten corrupted when I had to shut off my laptop during a defrag of that external drive. I have a post going in the Hardware Forum here..... you can read more of my plight and what's been going on. I'm going to do another reformat on my laptop in case something messed up with it when I shut it off the other day. Not sure if that will help or not, but I have nothing to lose but 13 gigs of files on a drive that I can't currently access :( I'm trying to salvage some of my files that I moved back to my laptop, so I'm uploading them to my web and have file transfers going with a friend over MSN for things I can't upload due to size. What a mess.

Acadia,
You're using Windows XP, aren't you? I get the "High speed USB2 device in a legacy USB1 port" nonsense very often in XP Pro (and all I can do is reboot); XP's USB drivers are very buggy. :-(

In your case, reinstalling the OS is the best solution. It is possible your external drive is okay, but your computer just can't see it anymore, because of an USB driver breakdown.

cedarwolf,
Chances are the same applies to you; Did you try to plug your USB drive into some other computer? If other computers see it, the problem are your USB drivers.

The only solution for USB driver hell is upgrading XP to Win2000... :-D Win2000's USB drivers are rock solid. Military grade stuff...

Ok, er, what th' heck is Win2000? Is it compatible with all the other XPPro stuff? I brought the drive to work, plugged it into another computer using XPPro and it did the same thing...I saw the files for a brief period, then they vanished. Is it possible to upgrade/update USB drivers at any time?

Well, after a reformat, and a change in USB cable (I borrowed my HP all in one printer USB Cable), I still get the same problem. I suspect something became corrupt with the drive when I had to do a hard shut down using "OFF" on my laptop, during a defrag of that external drive. I suspect that because it showed as "healthy" when I manged to view it in Computer Management, that the only way to get it functioning again is to format it and lose all my data on it :( A friend of mine is going to login to my system via remote assistance (if I can get it to work), and look at my BIOS or something. I"m so frustrated I don't know whether to laugh or cry over it. She tells me to do something, or look for something or try something... and I'm totally lost by what she's talking about. I feel so stupid :( Also... she tried looking for updated drivers for the hard drive.. but because it's a Maxtor nternal drive with something toshiba (she thinks)... she can't find any. The good news is that I wrote to Maxtor (twice), and begged them to help me, even if it wasn't an original external drive. They reviewed my situation and told me that I should call their 800 tech number. I'll do that tomorrow if I can't get anything fixed tonight. If they can't help me, then I will start reinstalling from scratch. I'm now totally bummed out about external drives, and doubt I'll ever try using another one. What a pain in the butt.

Attached Link: http://www.bestbuy.ca/catalog/proddetail.asp?logon=&langid=EN&sku_id=0926INGFS10052338&catid=#

If another computer shows the same problems, it seems the drive has indeed been damaged. (BTW Win2000, or Windows 2000, is the previous Windows version).

If you feel competent enough, you could try to open the drive case, extract the hard drive which is inside, and try it in some computer, in case it's just the IDE to USB electronics which is broken.

About buying -
What I would do, is buy a high grade HD (the same kind you would put in your computer), and an empty USB case. That way you can make really cheap high-grade external HDs. A good method to recycle old HDs too, and in this case your external drive only costs the price of the USB casing, about $20-50...

If you buy ready-made products, like that WD 80GB Dual Option External HD, there is an old trick to get a quick user survey; In Google, type in the name of the product + "problem", and you'll get a quick list of what problems people might have had using this item, all over Internet... ;-)

Quote - If you feel competent enough, you could try to open the drive case, extract the hard drive which is inside, and try it in some computer

I can drywall and tape. I can lay carpet, stretch it and seam it. I can change a picture tube in an old television. I can even take apart a vacuum motor and change the bearings. I even managed to get an engine installed into an old Ford van after it was hoisted in... granted I did have some parts left over with that... but it did work :) However, computers scare me to death. I've never seen the inside of a computer. I had an old clock radio that broke and I figured I'd try and fix it... it was a digital one. I looked at it once and tossed it in the trash and bought a big ben alarm clock, LOL A friend of mine hooked up to remote assistance and got all kinds of things updated for me. Seems I was ages behind in some things. The drive still doesn't work.. but at least I know my laptop is current. I've resigned myself to installing all the files again. I've packed up that hard drive and put it in a box in the closet. I'll format it sometime, but I'm not entrusting my files to it again. I also decided to wait on buying something else. I'd rather pay more for something better and with more space instead of buying something inferier and smaller in size than I want now. I may as well put that money towards something better. This means that my laptop will be starving for hard drive space for a couple months until I can save for a 250 gig drive. As for buying a regular hard drive and putting it into a case... I have no clue how to do that. Nor after this experience do I want to. The one I have now is an internal hard drive put into an external casing... and look what that got me... a huge waste of time and the need to reformat twice in as many days, and I still lost the bulk of my files. It seems to me that trying to make an external drive from one that isn't meant to be that is only asking for a huge amount of problems. I'm rather turned off by the idea of an external drive actually. I thought they were supposed to be great and my first try with one ended up a huge mess.

[This overlapped with Acadia's post]

Acadia, cedarwolf, are you using a USB-powered external or does it come with a power adapter? USB-powered external sometimes just get too little power to function correctly.(Wouldn't explain why it worked first time, though, and probably they just wouldn't work at all)

Acadia, I'll repeat my question. Did you just reinstall Windows without installing separate chipset drivers? This may not be necessary for your laptop, but my pc's motherboard came with a cd with chipset drivers. Without them my AGP video card and network card would not be identified properly by Windows XP. USB2 should be XP (SP1/SP2) native, but you may have some particular chip.

cedarwolf, your drive is not overheating, is it? Is it hot to the touch?

Don't just reformat your external drive if you don't get it to work. As rty advises extract the hard drive from its case and try it on its own - or have someone try it for you, if you're not sure about doing this yourself.

Message edited on: 09/27/2005 03:30

I'm sorry... you've lost me. I don't know computer lingo.

All I do to reformat is stick in the Dell CD... press F12 at the Dell Screen, pick NTFS system and then let it do it's thing. After that I use the other CD of drivers and install the ones with the check marks next to them, in the order that Dell told me to do it. One was "chip".. what that is for I don't know. All I know is that the guy at Dell said I need it.

Tonight my friend went to Dell and found 3 updates for my computer. One was BIOS... I had 06 and they were up to 11 already. Plus she got new drivers for my CD Burner, and one to increase my windows speed. The drive still didn't work :(

She said I have USB 1 things, and that the hard drive is looking for a USB 2 or something and doesn't seem to be backwards like what I need. (hope I got that right... it was all Greek to me). She said I need one that works in older USB ports as well as newer ones. Apparently I have older ones.

I put the drive in the closet. If my nephew gets some free time I'll have him take a look at it. He's a tech and likes to tinker with stuff like that. I don't like to bother him with stuff though because between his work, school and both his Mom and Dad's computer woes.... he has enough to deal with. They're even more stupid when it comes to computers than I am!!! :)

I just wish that if it were not going to work that it did it from the get go instead of working and then suddenly deciding that it didn't like my USB ports after it ate my files. To answer your question about power.... It has an AC adeptor cord that I plugged in, and then it has a USB cable that goes from the drive to my computer.

Message edited on: 09/27/2005 03:44

However, computers scare me to death. I've never seen the inside of a computer.

Nothing to worry about, it's not any worse than a car engine actually. :-D

As for buying a regular hard drive and putting it into a case... I have no clue how to do that.

If you can tell the two ends of a screwdriver apart, you should be able! A HD looks like a big metallic soap bar with 2 connectors on one side, a big one for data, a small one for power. The USB casing (bought empty) is actually an empty box with, inside, a big connector for data and a small one for power. I guess you start to see a pattern... ;-D
Plug the connectors, fix the HD inside the case with 4 screws, close the case (some more screws), and that's it.

The one I have now is an internal hard drive put into an external casing...

Most are. But that's not the problem; As you said, the HDs inside are the same you've got inside your computer, so if they work inside the computer, they should also work inside an external casing (and the other way round).

Back to your problem:

• I think it would be a good idea to ask that nephew of yours to give it a quick look; You might salvage all your files. Tell him to check the HD inside; Maybe it's just your casing which has a problem.

• The USB-1 to USB-2 problem isn't important. USB-2 is just a faster version of USB, and if your computer doesn't support it, it only means your USB drive isn't as fast as it could, that's all.

• To format a drive, you just click with your right mouse buton on it and select "Format...". That DELL CD you use is a complete reinstall of the system, and since your computer is old, it reinstalls an old system, without all the latest fixes, drivers, and most important, security patches! You'll have to make a long session of Windows Update afterwards.

"cedarwolf, your drive is not overheating, is it? Is it hot to the touch?" Hmm...it has been, in the past. I've got a fan on it most of the time because my little office area at home has a limited air flow and I worry about equipment overheating. Now I'm wondering if that might have something to do with the problem...and yes, it has an external powern adapter. I've switched it to its own plug a couple of times and this didn't seem to make a difference, but I'll try it again. Our power supply is notoriously shakey on the best of days and it's not unusual to lose power repeatedly during warm spells.

I resigned myself to reinstalling all of my poser content one file at a time from scratch. I have about 3 gigs of files left to install. Today I decided to try the external drive on my desktop again in the hopes of being able to format it to see if that would fix it. For some reason even though my desktop is older than my laptop, it seems to be able to scan for the drive once I'm in Computer Management. The drive showed up as 'healthy' and without a system next to it. When I first got it, it had 'Fat32' under system. I did a format of the drive using NTFS, and now the drive shows "healthy" and has an NTFS system listed next to it. I checked for hidden folders and there are none. I can now surf around my computer with the drive plugged in and it doesn't lag or freeze up my computer, and I can access the drive through "My Computer" without any difficuty. I haven't tried it on my laptop yet, but I will shortly. If it works there, I will transfer my new runtimes to the external drive.... but keep them on my laptop's drive as well, just in case. If after a month of using them from the external drive, it proves to be working well, then I'll delete them from my laptop's drive. But I'm not taking any chances!!! Whatever it was that went wonky when I did a hard shutdown during the defrag, seems to have been remedied by formatting the drive..... well that and if falling off of my tower (which sits on the floor) may have helped a little. But yay!!!! It works! Too bad I had to lose all my files though :( I now know that it's not a good idea to open folders while you are defragging!!!! I think that hidden folder that had 'restore' folders/files in it was the problem. I'm not sure what was in there, but I made sure that the drive is absolutely empty now and showing it's name as 'new volume'. So hopefully it will work ok. Thanks to everyone who offered all kinds of suggestions in order to try and retrieve my lost files.