mikehende

Strangest thing happened here Guys that I would appreciate an explanation for. My new Tower from Dell came with a cd burner so I took one of the regular cd roms from one of my other pcs and installed it into the new Tower but when I checked , the pc was not recognizing it so I played around for a half-hour or so changing the cable e.t.c but still nothing so I tried using another cd burner from one of my other pc's that I know was working 100% and this time it worked, I was able to see both drives now labelled D and E so apparently the first cd rom I used was defective. I then decided to try a "Copy" just to see what would happen, lo and behold, it copied a cd perfectly, now this is WITHOUT me having to change the Jumper settings on both drives. The reason why I attempted the burn before changing the Jumper settings was because in one of my other Dell desktops when I'd looked at how the 2 cd roms were connected I noticed that BOTH the regular cd rom and the burner were set to "Cable select" so neither Master nor Slave jumper settings were used. Now, in my Compaq Desktop, when I looked at this same setup I noticed that it was set just like the way Bob described, so what I would like to know now please is "why" both methods work? Also, is one method better than the other? Thanks.

ok, it looks like there is no remedy for this so let's try something else, I've heard of people using external HD's as an optional drive so seeing that I have already copied the image of the laptop unto the external HD, if something should happen to the laptop or if I wish to use a desktop pc instead later on, can I use the external with all of the programs that's already in it as the main drive? If so, how please? Do I have to install an OS in it?

Hi Bob, I posted my main question concerning the External HD in another thread about "backing up" my laptop unto it, was just looking for info I can read up on concerning everyhting about External Hard drives.

Got a Dell desktop that came with a cdrw and would like to add a regular cd rom so I can copy from the cd rom directly to the cdrw, how can I do the "wiring" or where can I get info on how to it please? Thanks.

Can anyone lead me to any sites/forums/tutorials that deals with working with "External" hard drives please? Thanks.

Hello everyone I am new to this forum so please bear with me. I have a laptop that I use for music when travelling and would like to back up evrything on that laptop unto an "External HD" so I will always have the info stored safely in it under my bed and can retrieve all of the info if my laptop should ever get stolen, damaged e.t.c. I also want to be able to transfer what's on the external drive into one of my Desktop pc's so I can have easy access to my music when I am browsing the net. I was told that I need a "Drive imaging" software that will back up everything on my laptop, OS and all and was directed to Norton Ghost 9, asked them if this will work with their software, they said "Yes" so I bought the external HD and the Norton software and was succesfull in transferring the Laptop's data into the external HD but when I tried to transfer from the external drive into one of my Dell desktop pc's, that's where the trouble began. Norton's Techs told me to change the "Jumper" settings to make the external HD the "Slave" so I called Dell to inquire on how to do this. The Dell Tech told me that it is possible for me to transfer the data from the External to the desktop but IT WILL NOT WORK, that I will receive more problems than I can handle. He said that when you back up an "image" of a drive then you can only recover or install back into a pc with the exact same physical aspects if it is to work properly, so in this case, seeing that I copied the laptop then I can only transfer from the external drive back into either the same laptop or a new but exactly the same laptop. I am now looking around for any other software that will allow me to use the external HD for backup but every "transfer" software I've come across has a problem with backing up on an "external" HD for some reason. They say I can transfer directly from the laptop to any Desktop but NOT from any external HD. I don't neccessairily have to copy the OS of my laptop, I only need to copy the programs, files and registry settings but I can't get my money back for the external HD and would like to use it for this purpose, so can anyone reading this PLEASE provide any help/links/advice e.t.c with this issue? I have been at this for a couple of weeks now and I am very frustrated, will deeply appreciate any input, thanks.