Ok so about 9 months ago my old computer crashed, it was some custom built one with a samsung SP1213N internal hdd.

I never really new what the problem was, I am not that tech savvy but it was christmas time so I just got a good deal on a new laptop.

Now recently it has come to my attention that i can retrieve files from this dead computer’s hard drive , using a cable that would turn it into a external hard drive that I could just plug in to my laptop’s usb.

Would a USB 2.0 to IDE ATA External Hard Disk CD-ROM DVD Drive Adapter Converter Cable work for a samsung SP1213N?

Please I really need help because I had allot of important pictures on that computer like family stuff and some writing.

I just bought this external hard drive

http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/products/external/freeagent/freeagent_xtreme

the seagate extreme, and I want to use the eSATA option for doing backups.

Ive seen a few esata to usb adapters, but I think that it will defeat the purpose if I run eSATA through a usb.
are there any other adapters i can use?
I have a dell D800
Its pretty old, but I know how to take care of it.
yeah it comes with a usb cable
but Ii would rather use eSATA for backing up my computer

Im trying to find a way to replace my apple router because it doesnt work in my apartment due to interference. So heres the scenario….

I have a usb external hard drive that i want to put on my wireless G network to perform apple time machine backups /file transfers but the router doesnt have a usb port. So what im wanting to know is if i connect get a linksys ethernet to usb adapter, a female to female usb adapter, and connect the hard drive up, will my apple laptop be able to see the hard drive to do backups and file transfers?

I have a Dell Inspiron B130 laptop, and a few months back it crashed when someone decided to mess with the processes. I just now got around to fixing it, at first trying to save data from the hard drive. Getting frustrated with my hard drive adapter and IDE cable and still not being able to access the slave drive, I decided to run the Windows System Reset/Restore thing (Ctrl F11 from start-up on Dell), but like a moron I didn’t have the machine plugged in. The battery flaked out during the process, and now I can’t run Restore again. I recently acquired a LAN cable, and I’m wondering if there is some way I can boot the laptop from the working computer. Also, I have an external hard drive and a copy of Windows, could I boot from the external hard drive if I put the operating system files on the hard drive?

I purchased an external hard drive that allows pretty much any type of connection, from USB 2.0 to SATA/eSATA. However, my laptop only has USB 2.0 ports. I purchased a USB 2.0 to SATA/eSATA bridge adapter, but I’m not sure if using it would give me higher speeds or not. It doesn’t matter when I’m watching movies or listening to music, but I’d like to play some low-resource games and I’d like to max the speed out as much as possible. Is using the bridge adapter redundant, or will I see faster speeds from it?

I have a Gateway CX2610 tablet PC that works great and all, but I’ve been having problems with some of the USB devices that I have. I bought a USB hub so that I could plug the following devices all in at once:
– USB Bluetooth
– Microsoft Optical Mouse
– Printer
– Sound Blaster Audigy 2 NX External Sound Card
– iPod dock (Obviously I disconnect this when it’s not in use, but it doubles as an iPod radio for me, so it’s plugged in a lot)
– 250GB External Hard Drive
– VGA to S-Video adapter box

…now, two days ago, I bought the VGA to S-Video adapter box, and it worked famously. Just wonderfully. However, when it did work, I found that my external hard drive and printer did not; apparently, the S-Video adapter – which uses a USB port solely for power – took up too much power to allow my computer to recognize the other devices.

I screwed around with plugging some different devices in, and found that everything still works just fine if I only have 2 maybe 3 devices plugged in – but it seems there’s a significant power draw for this video adapter that I can’t offset. When I unplug just that, everything else seems to work alright, so, I need to solve this problem one of two ways:

1. Find another power source for the video adapter, or
2. Figure out a way that my laptop can give enough power to all of the devices.

Either will work. Seeing as how the second option would likely not involve buying extra hardware or a different kind of adapter, I’m leaning towards that one, but, well, how can I make it so that the amount of power going to the USB devices isn’t restricted, and that they can all work at once?

I pulled a converter card from a WD external hard drive. The adapter is 12V. I would like to replace the hard drive with my laptop hard drive that is 5V. Both are SATA. Has anyone here ever connected a 5V hard drive up to one of these controllers?

I have a WD Passport Portable external hard drive. I’m not very happy with it as there are virtually no instructions for people like me who do not know how to use a hard drive. I want to use it to move some data from my laptop to the hard drive to free up space on my laptop. I thought that all I had to do was to plug the USB adapter into my computer and it would very easily walk me thru the process of backing up the files I want to move, so that I could them delete them from my laptop. (yes..one thing I do know is that by doing that I am not "technically" backing up the files because there is still only one copy of the files. I realize that I need to also backup the external hard drive in this instance).

There were a variety of files that show up in the WD folder, but I couldn’t tell what any of them were for. After some time, I finally stumbled upon the option to install some software. While doing that, it had me choose what data from my laptop I wanted to back up on the hard drive. I thought that once I completed this step I could go to my laptop and delete those same file. However, I have since figured out that what I did was sync my external hard drive…not back up my files. I did some research, discovered the difference between syncing and backing up. I figured that what I needed to do was move my files from laptop onto the external hard drive by "cutting" and "pasting" the files I want to move. So, I was going to try that, but I can’t tell which file in the WD folder I am supposed to move the files into.

My questions:
1. If I only sync (vs. backing up) am I supposed to be able to find the files I synced in a folder within the WD folder? I have looked thru all of them and can’t find anything.

2. I have now read someplace that I have to buy software that works with this WD hard drive and allows me to move my data from my laptop to the hard drive. Do I really have to buy some software…or can I just cut and paste the files from my laptop to the external hard drive?

3. If I CAN just cut and paste, how do I know which of the WD folders I am supposed to put the moved files into?

I’m very confused as you can tell. I appreciate any help.
Thanks,

Jbones1
my email address is

cmjoni@comcast.net

i was using the external hard drive. it just shut off while i was using it. a few second later, i smell something burn. it must be the hard drive not the external adapter. how can i get the data out? i am using laptop and can’t connect to the master hard drive like the pc. please help

I have a external hard drive. For some reasons I should connect it via usb hub. Usb hub has a adapter. Without adapter external doesnt work.

When I turn-off my laptop external is still on. Do you think if it is always on is it a problem, or it burns??

I have a external hard drive. For some reasons I should connect it via usb hub. Usb hub has a adapter. Without adapter external doesnt work.

When I turn-off my laptop external is still on. Do you think if it is always on is it a problem, or it burns??

I have a USB hard drive that can be powered by a USB 2.0 port. But my laptop has only USB 1.1. I was thinking of buying a PCMCIA card adapter with USB 2.0 just to make my External hard drive to work. Would it work ? Please help!

i just installed windows xp on my sony vaio laptop using a windows xp disk from a dell desktop. now my sony vaio laptop is a dell portable desktop with vaio written on it.
i did this cause my laptop fatally crashed. unrestorable.

i need to install a wifi network driver to get my laptop mobile again.
currently my laptop is using a 1394 net adapter.

if someone can tell me where i can get a free wifi driver to install on my
laptop to get it wireless again and how to install it, thatd be great..

side note. since i dont have internet on my laptop, obviously, i been trying to download a broadcom driver or something on my desktop and
transfer it to my laptop using a external hard drive.
Ha-ha! I love ya! why didnt i think of thatt!?
that was easy as shitt! easyy peezyy..
took me less then 5 min, and now im wirless..

I recently bought a Lacie USB 2.0 160GB external hard drive but had to return due to a power surge on my hub port. This decive wasnt being recognised on my Dell Inspiron 510m laptop and the following message appeared ‘The USB mass storage devise has exceeded the power limits of it’s hub port’. Does this mean that my computer does not support USB 2.0 drives? Do I need a power adapter as additional source? If any out there have a similar problem and have now found the right drive for their computer, then please advise with recommendations.

I am currently stationed in Iraq. My sister sent me some brand new computer speakers for my laptop in the mail. Without thinking about it, I plugged them in, and it ended up blowing the entire circuit. Everything else I have plugged in (my laptop, external hard drive, DVD burner, tape deck, battery charger, razor charger, etc) has encountered no such problem with the 250v. The speakers won’t even turn on, though. I don’t know much about electricity so I’ll give the details, and see if any of you know what is wrong: The input on the adapter is supposed to be 120v AC 60Hz 260mA and it’s supposed to output 14v DC 1100mA to the subwoofer and speakers. Now, did I blow the adapter, ruin the speakers, or do I just need to find away to make the source 120v instead of 250v? Please help, my sister spent some good money on these speakers for me and it would break her heart to know that her generosity will never be enjoyed by myself. Thank you.

I have a 55.8 GB external hard drive. I plugged it into my laptop, a Compaq Presario 700 running Windows XP, and it recognizes the drive is attached, but it keeps freezing the system while trying to load the drivers. It gives me the ‘blue screen of death’ and talks about a kernel error and ‘beginning dump of physical memory.’

It did the same thing with a USB powered flexible keyboard, which I was able to get around by using a USB to P/S2 adapter. However, I tried connecting the external drive with the adapter and it was not recognized at all. My speakers are also making a ‘skipping’ noise when starting the system.

What could be the cause of the freezing? How can I get around this problem?

I have a wireless network in my house, with two printers and an external hard drive hooked up to a desktop computer in my living room. I can get to all my files, music, and stuff on the desktop computer from my laptops when I’m in the network IF the desktop computer is on, which is great; but I’d like to be able to access my stuff without always having to leave it on. So is there some kind of wireless adapter or something that I can plug in my wireless hard drive and 2 printers (all USB) into that will let me access them from my laptop even if my desktop is not on?
I’ve got a wireless router with ethernet ports.

Is there any way to make this work with my existing hard drive? I’d rather not buy another one, that has "NAS"

I just built my own external hard drive and it worked with a desktop. But when I plugged it on my laptop it didn’t do anything, didn’t recognized it but it has the LED on.

I’m assuming that my laptop’s USB doesn’t have enough power to support external hard drives. So I’m planning to buy a USB hub w/ a power adapter to have its own power, will it work? my laptop has 1.1 USB and it can support up to 500mA power…

I just bought a new 1 TB external hard drive and I want to be able to back up my mac book wirelessly like with a time capsule without spending all the money on a time capsule and instead using my cheaper external hard drive. It connects via mini USB to USB 2.0. Is there any adapter that you can plug into both sides and it could connect over bluetooth, or anything similar to that. The cheapest possible solution would be the best.

Where can I find a 1 TB external hard drive that runs off USB power only? Which is the best model?
I need it for my laptop, and I am not willing to carry the AC adapter with me each time I travel.

Thanks.