[stressfreesoul]

About 4 months ago I bought a Philips USB hard drive for £70 (the one in the aluminium case). THIS one. I half expected to find the internal drive to be a laptop sized IDE. So I left it alone, being it was probably a standard drive anyway.
I was sat doing some work last night and just happened to put my hand on it, obviously it was gonna be warm, but this was almost hot!! So I set about taking the case off to see if I could cool it more efficiently. Turns out its a Seagate ST3500830SCE!!. So I promptly fitted it internally next to the 120mm fans bringing nice cool air in and its already 20 centigrade cooler. At least it might live longer now!!

Plus to that, The 320GB Maxtor that came with the PC was set to 1.5Gb transfer speed whaen my board supports SATA2!! Wondered why it was slow for a SATA. Nevermind, both drives are now running at the highest they can. It makes all the difference. So for anyone else out there with a SATA2 compatible board and SATA drives, just check that there are no jumpers on the pins next to the data plug!!

 

[tecknomage]

1. Right-click My Computer
2. Select Manage
3. Select Device Manager on left
4. Expand [+] Universal Serial Bus controllers on right
5. Ensure you have USB2 drivers

Most USB Hard Drives require USB2 to work properly.

Your motherboard may not support USB2, my old motherboard did not, which is why I use Firewiare and still do.

 

[stressfreesoul]

It worked as it should have, I just love the fact that I now have a 500GB SATA2 drive instead of using the slower USB. Even firewire is slower than SATA2. Good thing is, I still have the innards of the drive so I can use any SATA drive through USB (testing, quick backup)