Smooth firewire HDD install.

[Poppa_Meth]

Just put together a Seagate 120GB HDD with a Bytec Enclosure and installed an Adaptec Firewire card to run it all on. Took less than an hour, since I've never done it before. I can't believe it actually went so smoothly. Everytime I do anything I inevitably run into some sort of problem. This is the first time I've done anything smoothly. The format only took about 45 seconds with seagates disc wizard. I was just so happy about it I had to post on it. Now my whole PC will likely explode without warning, but what can you do?

[Poppa_Meth]

Question: In the drive properties I can set it to optimize for quick removal or optomize for performance. Which would be the best setting? I'm eventually planning to try transfering from a digital 8 cam to the firewire drive.

[ViRaL1]

Go with performance. An extra second or two wait before disconnecting isn't worth a performance hit.

[Poppa_Meth]

Thats what I thought, I just have to remember to safely remove the drive before powering it off. I'm use to it with a pendrive but I can imagine myself forgetting to do so with a hard drive.

[Soopafresh]

Nice when that happens....and quite rare indeed.

[Poppa_Meth]

So would it be okay to shut the PC down without removing it first when using optomized policies? I ask because I had to do this today. When I tried to remove it it said something else was using it and I never could figure out what. So I shutdown and restarted and all data appears intact. I'm guessing windows automatically shuts down such devices before shutting itself down.

[redwudz]

My Firewire HD always says it can't be stopped right now and to try again later. Later never comes, even overnight.

Tried every setting. Sometimes I just unplug it and I have never had any problems doing that.

It's probably better to leave it connected, though, and shut down the computer, then remove it.

It's a 10G 2.5" portable HD and I have both removed it with the computer on and off a few hundred times with no ill effects. (Just not when it's writing!!)

[ViRaL1]

Are you sharing it? Are there any other FW devices attached to it?

[Skith]

Unless I am mistaken, WinXP w/firewire does not require the use of "Safely Remove Hardware"... at least after a certain patch (inluded in one of the service packs).

Some process in windows is likely monitoring the drive/connection. If you try using the "Safely Remove Hardware" option right after boot (without accessing the drive), it will not give you that error.

[ViRaL1]

What's interesting is that I've had times where the icon didn't even show up in the System Tray. I had to go through Add / Remove Hardware to get the icon to show up. As far as removing it without stopping it, I've had times where I DID remove it and got a 'Delayed Write Failed' error. I don't think I lost any data, but it's not something I'll do normally.

[Poppa_Meth]

Not sharing and no other devices attached. I'll just leave it until shut down when it does this as I've noticed to data failure or anything so far. And yes right after reboot it can be removed fine. After accessing it for a few time to copy data or something similar thats when it won't remove correctly. I'd agree that something is probably monitoring the drive. Thanks for the input.