rex_crow

Hi all, I'm trying to configure an external USB2 harddrive enclosure on a HP Pavilion ze4420ca with a generic cardbus that has a NEC chip. There are numerous posts concerning problems with external enclosures and usb2 and no one seems to know a workable solution. I want to try setting up a second hardware profile with certain devices disabled and manually assign irq and memory address. THis way the second profile can be used just for transferring files onto the laptop. Ideally - if I can get it to transfer at high speed - I can use the external drives as a library, keeping everything, including a ghost image of a clean install and only using the 40G internal drive for the operating system and programs and a few Gigs of current files. I switched the computer to standard pc in device manager - but - the manual settings for IRQ still aren't enabled (Do I have to do a clean install to force a Hal change? I've also disabled: floppy disk controller, modem, printer port (LPT1). What else can i disable? Also, is there a way to sync the files back to the external storage if I've modified them? I've posted a web page with some logs and a screenshot of system devices. http://www.geocities.com/rex_crow/ Thanks all who respond.

The laptop is 1 1/2 years. CPU Type Mobile Intel Celeron 4A, 2000 MHz (20 x 100) CPU Alias Northwood-256 Instruction Set x86, MMX, SSE, SSE2 I have an external enclosure (SE-Series?) with an Ali chip Theres a sticker on the inside that states that the enclosure will only work with the drive set to Master (Obviously - 1 drive is master) Well.... I thought if i put a dual ide cable and spliced the power i could get two drives working together, It worked. But... I could never get full usb2 speed - not even close - not even with only 1 drive connected. My 1st cardbus had an ali chip in it - it showed both drives but slow transfer speeds (somethinglike 30 min for 1G) My new cardbus has a NEC chip which is suppose to be better from what I've read. Itried it at the store and it seemed to recognize both drives pretty fast so I thought it was good. After I brought it home along with a 160G WD drive I was able to partition the drive (via the usb enclosure) but shortly after i started transfering files it suddenly dropped off. I'm thinking shared memory but i'm not very knowlegable on the subject. I tried reinstalling the drivers, tried all diferent combinations of compatable and non compatable (signed) drivers until I settled on my current config. that seems to need the onboard USB1 devices to be disabled. Now with 2 drives connected I'm getting an i/o error after transfering files. Transfer Speeds: 5 tests aprox 700MB file 1- single drive: G - C 0:48 sec. 2- 2 drives C - G 1:24 3- 2 dives G - I (transfering between 2 externals) 0:20 sec into transfer i/o error 4- single drive: G - C 1:50 5- " " : C - G 2:35 The best time (test #1) is under 14Mb/sec nowhere close to 480Mbps. I would be happy with 100Mb. Thanks