[kelkarshriram]

I have Dell Inspiron 1000 Pentium laptop and I download tons of torrent movies. Hence I bought Maxtor 200GB hard disk (from Staples in deal) and External Hard Drive Enclosure - 5.25inch USB2.0 - Aluminum by Anyware from Shop4tech.com and made USB external hard disk with 4 partitions of 50GB each.

I am able to use the computer and download movies. The system is always On and downloading torrents. The problem is at night (after downloads have run whole day) when I try to use the computer, It kind of freezes. when I open explorer. I can see that it (explorer.exe or at times taskmgr.exe) is using 99% of CPU. Memory Memory usage is OK. Even if I try killing the explorer process, I cant. I try shutting down, I can't. I have to hard-boot the PC and then after starting I can use computer and explorer as well - although slow I can read write files to the to the drive.

1. How can I resolve the performance issues ?
2. I called up Maxtor helpdesk and they said that its a internal hard disk so it cannot be used as external hard disk ? Is that true ? internal hard disk can never be used as external hard disk ?
3. Has it anything to do with USB 1 or 2? I dont know how to find which USB version my computer has.


Could somebody please please please help me. Otherwise I will have to return the hard-disk and buy an external hard-disk which I don't want to as it was a very good deal.

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Hi and welcome to Geeks to Go. You should be able to use any EIDE hard drive inside of that enclosure. You should check the manufacturers specifications on the enclosure, it may have a size limitation. Some do, some don't. I have put together 4 such devices myself, using different hard drives (Samsung, Seagate, Western Digital) of diffenent sizes and never had any problem. I stay away from Maxtor myself (just my choice based on what I read in forums, reviews etc). Sounds like Maxtor is giving you a song and dance, but you need to rule out the enclosure first. Also, try running their diagnostics program on the hard drive.

As far as figuring out if you have usb1 or usb2, get Belarc Advisor (google for it). Free download. Run that and it will tell you what you have.

Edited by austin_o, 12 April 2006 - 10:15 AM.

[austin_o]

Hi and welcome to Geeks to Go. You should be able to use any EIDE hard drive inside of that enclosure. You should check the manufacturers specifications on the enclosure, it may have a size limitation. Some do, some don't. I have put together 4 such devices myself, using different hard drives (Samsung, Seagate, Western Digital) of diffenent sizes and never had any problem. I stay away from Maxtor myself (just my choice based on what I read in forums, reviews etc). Sounds like Maxtor is giving you a song and dance, but you need to rule out the enclosure first. Also, try running their diagnostics program on the hard drive.

As far as figuring out if you have usb1 or usb2, get Belarc Advisor (google for it). Free download. Run that and it will tell you what you have.

Edited by austin_o, 12 April 2006 - 10:15 AM.

[kelkarshriram]

Hey thanks a tonne.. Let me work on it. I have bought another enclosure. lets see if it works.

Thanks a lot once again for your help...