external storage

I thought I posted this yesterday but it looks like it may not have. This is reworded.

Any input: I use two external WD Passport hard drives to save my show files; saving in 3 different locations. That's just the way I am. Anyway one of the drives has gone bad. The other one; a WD Passport Ultra drive takes forever to show up on my ION. When I boot the console with the drive connected it takes forever to boot. When I boot without the drive it boots normal time but then when I plug in the drive it takes forever to show up as a drive. That has never been answered.

My new question is this: I purchased a new "My Passport" WD 1tb drive to replace the bad drive and my ION won't see it at all. I'm guessing it's because it's a Windows 7 drive and I have to reformat it to XP. So what settings should I chose, if that's the case, that will work perfectly with my ION? it it's not a Windows 7 drive issue any input?

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John728 over 7 years ago

There is no such thing as "reformat it to XP."

I personally format all my drives to FAT32 so I know they will work on any console or any computer.

You didn't mention the size of your WD Passport Ultra drive but I'm guessing it's a large hard disk drive and that's why it takes so long to show up. I would invest in a couple small solid state USB drives. 4GB should be more than enough.
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John728 over 7 years ago

There is no such thing as "reformat it to XP."

I personally format all my drives to FAT32 so I know they will work on any console or any computer.

You didn't mention the size of your WD Passport Ultra drive but I'm guessing it's a large hard disk drive and that's why it takes so long to show up. I would invest in a couple small solid state USB drives. 4GB should be more than enough.
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Jeff Toussieng over 7 years ago in reply to John728

John, Thank you for the reply. I wondered if HP puts some sort of running file on them that might interfere. The Ultra is large however I think less than a tb. Only a guess.
What I did do was change the drive letter on the new one using my desktop but not sure if that affects what the consoles see it as. Not sure that an be done on the console but that was one guess I had; it was unable to see it because of the drive letter conflicting. Changing it on my desktop didn't fix it for the console. Still won't see it.
I can try formatting both of them as FAT32 if they aren't already (probably NTFS) and see what happens.
I am using larger drives because I save all of my shows "Ever".
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John728 over 7 years ago in reply to Jeff Toussieng

I don't know about any file that would interfere, but reformatting the drive will destroy all files.
Changing a drive letter affects only the computer you changed the drive on. If my drive is "E" on my laptop and "F" on my desktop, if I change it on the laptop to "G", when I plug it back into the desktop it will read as "F".
I save periodically to the console HDD but on the USB drive, I only keep the most recent version of the show file because there's no point in carrying copies of obsolete files. I have 98 show files and it's only 150mb.

You can use a drive that's bigger than you need, but if you are concerned about speed, solid state is the way to go.
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Jeff Toussieng over 7 years ago in reply to John728

Interfering file would be something that WD puts on their drives to auto run for backing up or something that is trying to load that the console doesn't like. Maybe nothing there. It was just a thought.
I did a quick format on the new drive but the choice was Xfat. Going to see if that works before trying actual FAT. If that works then I might try that on the Ultra also, copying the files first of course so I can replace them back onto the drive after format. I totally agree; I really shoulda got a SS drive but did it all in a hurry and didn't think about it.
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ueliriegg over 7 years ago in reply to Jeff Toussieng

one of the things that affects the time the console needs between connecting a drive and actually displaying, is the number of files and the folder structure on the drive. if you have a 4TB drive with one showfile it will show up a lot faster than connecting a 50GB drive with thousands of showfiles in hundreds of folders and different levels of subfolders in subfolders.
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Jeff Toussieng over 7 years ago in reply to ueliriegg

my big issue right now is I can't get my new 1tb drive to show up at all on my ION. I reformatted it in xFat and still nothing.
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ueliriegg over 7 years ago in reply to Jeff Toussieng

can you feel the hard disk spin when connected to the Ion? if it's a usb3 product, it might not get enough power from non-usb3 ports on your ion
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Hans.Hinrichsen over 7 years ago in reply to Jeff Toussieng

exFAT is not recognized by the XP-based consoles. As a general rule, you'll want FAT32 ~~(which isn't possible at 1 TB)~~ or NTFS for compatibility.

Personally, I would be using a smaller flash drive to do the saves and back them up nightly to the larger drive using a laptop. The portability and efficiency factor for me wins out.
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John728 over 7 years ago in reply to Hans.Hinrichsen

You're wrong about the maximum volume size. I'm using an external 2TB drive formatted FAT32 to back up my laptop. (I've never tried hooking it up to an Ion; I use a 4GB stick for that.)

According to this article, FAT32 can go up to 16 TiB.

en.wikipedia.org/.../File_Allocation_Table
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Hans.Hinrichsen over 7 years ago in reply to John728

I stand corrected. Updated my earlier comment. Thanks!

I confused the Windows XP documentation that limited its ability to format FAT32 partitions, not necessarily looking for overall possible size. www.microsoft.com/.../choosing_between_ntfs_fat_and_fat32.mspx
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Jeff Toussieng over 7 years ago in reply to Hans.Hinrichsen

I'm thinking return the 1tb to Amazon or like suggested, save to a smaller flash drive then try to remember to put what I did on the larger one using my desk/lap top's. Good to know xFat isn't recognized. So that's probably one big issue. I might also try formatting Fat2 and see what happens. Yikes. technology can sure get us choked up.
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