USB External Hard Drive... Interesting

[VeraLynn]

For my birthday this December, my father got me an external 80 Gig
drive per my request. He had showed his to me while I was there
visiting earlier in the month and I asked if could get me one. In any
case, it's an excellent addition to my 19.1 Gig and 8.4 Gig drives. I
finally had a chance to get it running yesterday. When I shut off the
computer, I forgot/didn't bother to remove it software-like or turn it
off at all. When my guy came home and turned the computer on to use it,
I was out of the apartment. He called me to say that the computer
wasn't working. He tried to describe what it was doing to me over the
Nextel 2-way, but I knew I couldn't diagnose the problem very well from
the car. I told him I'd mess with it today.



So I boot up this morning and the computer only gets as far as the boot up screen. The bottom of the screen says,



Press Del to get to Setup or Esc to

12-24-2001 (a whole bunch of numbers like a long serial number)



-And it just sat there like that. Ut oh. Rebooting the computer 3 times
only got me to the same point each time. Hmmm... what's different about
the computer that might possibly mess it up... Oh! The external drive
is still on and connected. The computer was still sitting in its stuck
position when I shut off the external drive. It then immediately
started to boot up normally. And continued to boot up normally.



Without getting into personal details of why, this could be an easy way to keep my computer 'broken.'

[DavidNDC]

The only thing I can think of off the top of my head is your motherboard BIOS may be setup to use the external drive as the primary boot drive. See if you can get into the BIOS and see what the boot order is, I have mine set to boot in the following order Floppy-CD-Primary Hard Drive and have no problem with leaving my USB or my firewire drives plugged in and turned on during the boot up process.

[VeraLynn]

The only thing I can think of off the top of my head
is your motherboard BIOS may be setup to use the external drive as the
primary boot drive. See if you can get into the BIOS and see what
the boot order is, I have mine set to boot in the following order
Floppy-CD-Primary Hard Drive and have no problem with leaving my USB or
my firewire drives plugged in and turned on during the boot up process.

Thanks. I don't think it's set to use anything USB. It's set to go to
C:, which is my main drive. The external is F: - either way, I
figured it out at least. It's not a big deal to turn it off and on. The
storage space is well worth it.

[Dr Superb]

You should be able to boot normally with a USB drive connected and turned on anyway.

[VeraLynn]

You should be able to boot normally with a USB drive connected and turned on anyway.

Well, for some reason.... *shrug* It still isn't that big of a deal. I
figured it out on my first guess and it's easy enough. The drive is
going to be a storage camel, so I won't even be using it every time I
use my computer.

[Anonymous]

You should be able to boot normally with a USB drive connected and turned on anyway.

Well, for some reason.... *shrug* It still isn't that big of a deal. I
figured it out on my first guess and it's easy enough. The drive is
going to be a storage camel, so I won't even be using it every time I
use my computer.

Depending on the motherboard, there's probably an option to disable
booting from a USB device in the BIOS. I know that, for Intel
motherboards, the option is there and by default is enabled to allow
booting from USB drives (been hit with this one, too). It's a
simple check next time you power on your 'puter.





Kyle

[Anonymous]

You should be able to boot normally with a USB drive connected and turned on anyway.

Well, for some reason.... *shrug* It still isn't that big of a deal. I
figured it out on my first guess and it's easy enough. The drive is
going to be a storage camel, so I won't even be using it every time I
use my computer.

Never fear, your problem only has to do with the drive boot sequence. There is a listing in the BIOS (which may be called something else similar to the bolded text) that specifies the order that the computer should find a "bootable" drive on. So, your order is probably something like this:

3 1/2" Floppy
CD-ROM Drive
USB Mass Storage Device (your external HD)
Hard Drive
Network Device

So, just change it so that it tries the hard drive first, and then if that does not have an operating system on it, try the USB drive. Hope this helps! :smt006

[Anonymous]

Notice how men have an overwhelming urge to 'fix" something, even when women don't really want a fix? They just want to have someone listen to them. We can't help it, it's a fundamental difference in the makeup of the sexes. Took me YEARS to learn this. Now the trick is just to know when a fix IS wanted and when an attentive ear is all that is required.
:smt003

[Palamino]

Now the trick is just to know when a fix IS wanted and when an attentive ear is all that is required.
:smt003

I would like to add "or when a simulated attentive ear is good enough to get by with." :smt004

[Moefugger]

Now the trick is just to know when a fix IS wanted and when an attentive ear is all that is required.
:smt003

I would like to add "or when a simulated attentive ear is good enough to get by with." :smt004

:smt005 :smt005