Wish I had known that earlier because I had to do extra searches to find the XP stuff since the Win98 instuctions were what came up originally. For Win98, I think this will work. It was written for CD-ROMs, but substituting "Hard Drive" for "CD-ROM" should allow you to find your way and do it: 1. Single-click the Start button, mouse over Settings, single-click the control panel, and double-click the System icon. 2. When the System Properties box opens, select the Device Manager tab and make sure to check the "View devices by type" radio button. 3. Double-click the CD-ROM icon to expand the list of CD-ROMs installed. 4. When the list expands, double-click the CD-ROM you wish to assign a new letter to. 5. In the CD-ROM Properties dialog box, select the Settings tab. 6. To change the drive letter, go to the "Reserved drive letter" field. 7. You can assign a range of letters or a single letter by making the Start and End letters the same. 8. Select OK when finished making the change. 9. Restart your computer to implement the new drive letter.
Yeah, it should be EXTREMELY slow through USB 1.0 since that standard is nowhere near as fast as Firewire OR USB 2.0.
it's different for HD's. The choice is there, but it's greyed out. The only way to un-grey it is to select the drive and make it "removeable" but when I do that 1)it labels itself "removeable drive" 2)it can't be 'labeled' FAT b*stard like i'd like to name it... i guess that's pretty petty, I leave it labeled as "removeable drive" and be happy that the drive letter is permanent. I had actually done this earlier and switched it back, then posted, hoping maybe someone had another fix...
Your HD is fine. You dont need to turn it off. If you shut down your pc then the LED will remain lit but it is not being used (the HD). I dont turn off my pc every night so i dont worry about that.
What most people don't realize is the fact is that current hard drives don't even take advantage of all of IDE/ATA specs, and the IDE/ATA specs currently out are faster than the firewire and USB2 implementations in current external drives. Hence, most external firewire and USB2 drives perform no better than internal IDE drives and often perform worse. Part of this is because, to my knowledge, there are no "true" Firewire drives out there. All of them are just translating IDE to Firewire - in other words, they just slap IDE drives into a Firewire case.
Yeah, but if it's like my external Maxtor drives, it makes noise even when not in use. And that can be annoying.
mine's real quiet, but it's running, i can put my hand on it and feel it humming... i'm just gonna unplug it when i'm not using it.
