2.5" Portable 60gb usb2 drive

[quintain]

Hi.
I am the proud owner of a new 2.5" external Toshiba portable drive and enclosure; BUT!!! I thought I could leave it permanently connected by its usb cable and use it for my daily backups (using Genie pro ver6) except of course when I take it with me on my various trips away from the desktop machine. BUT, BUT, BUT the drive is constantly working/revolving and the actuation light is permanently on when connected to the desktop by the usb lead. I use win xp pro (sp2) can I put the new disc/drive (F) into hibernation or sleep or whatever, or is there any other suitable solution??, until the scheduled backup starts at 0400hrs. It defeats my reason for using it if I cannot leave it permanently connected as I need the automatic backup procedure to make sure that data is backed up rather than me forgotting to do so.

 

[Anti-Trend]

Windows is very irresponsible with its swapfile usage, so if I had to guess I'd say it was swapping to that drive. Control Panel -> System -> Advanced -> click "Settings" in the “Performance” section. On the Advanced page the current total physical size of all page files that may be in existence is displayed. Click Change to make settings for the Virtual memory operation. Here you can select any drive partition and set either ‘Custom’; ‘System Managed’ or ‘No page file’; then always click Set before going on to the next partition. What you want to do here is disble the page file altogether for your poor external HDD.

 

[megamaced]

‘No page file’; then always click Set before going on to the next partition. What you want to do here is disble the page file altogether for your poor external HDD.

Disabling the page file or virtual memory all together can have serious consequences!! Be careful when you carry this out and don't touch the page file on your C: drive. If you decrease or disable this page file, theres a good chance your system won't boot!

 

[Anti-Trend]

Yes, Windows is highly unstable without a swap file, as it swaps regardless of how much free RAM is available. Make sure you have at least one active swapfile at all times.