Re: External HDD vs Reinstall XP

I'm not exactly sure if I understand what you're asking, but I'll attempt an answer...

You should always use the Remove Hardware Safely utility to close your USB drive. Once the drive is closed, you may safely unplug it (USB cable and power cord).

If you're reinstalling Windows over itself from your Windows CD (a repair install) it doesn't matter whether or not your USB drive is plugged in or turned on.

If you're doing a clean install of Windows (erasing your hard disk and starting from scratch) you should leave the the USB drive unplugged, i.e., don't have the USB cable plugged into your computer. In fact, don't have any external peripherals attached to your computer other than your keyboard and mouse.

If you're restoring your system from backup files on the USB drive, boot the computer from your backup program's CD and let the backup program 'find' your USB drive. In this case your USB drive has to be attached to your computer before you boot from the CD (and your BIOS has to be set to boot from the CD drive first.)

So...was I close?

---
Ted Zieglar
"Backup is a computer user's best friend."

Dudley Henriques wrote:
Just purchased a Maxtor external HDD (100gig Personal Storage USB 2.0) .
Have a question please.
I can't foresee any situation where I would be disconnecting this drive from the computer while windows is operating, but if I even have to reinstall XP, what is the safe way to handle this drive?
Is it safe to power down the computer and then unplug the drive from the USB port, or do I have to use the utility shutdown icon on the taskbar before shutting down windows for the reboot to the XP CD?
In other words, I'm using this drive along with CDR's for duplicate backup for data and I sure don't want to lose the external drive's contents by doing this the wrong way.
Thanks very much
Dudley


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