Downloading to an external drive
 

Hey peeps :)

Okay, so we all know Limewire isn't a great fan of downloading to external drives.... but needs must and all that....
Anyways - to cut a long story short - due to a decreasing lack of space on my hard drive, I've been kinda having to do the external drive thing lately....

I do everything as it should be done - i.e. before I log off, I set my uploads and slots to zero, exit limewire - then unplug my external hard drive....

The weirdest thing keeps happening though....

When I want to use Limewire again - whether it's been a day or a week - I plug my hard drive in again (which is where my Limewire files download to), only to find that my *shared files* have decreased - sometimes up to 80 files.... i.e. I may be sharing 3500 files - but the next time I plug my hard drive in, 80-100 files have suddenly *unshared*..... I then have to go into my Saved/Shared files (they're the same folder), right click them and *share* them again....

This has well and truly got me stumped!

Lord, Remoc....?? Between you - you've always helped me with problems in the past. :xeri_ok1ani:

dunno d00d, but I do know that I use my external drives for storage...simple, download to an OS drive, then move to the external...

I guess if you have so many apps and such on a tiny little OS drive, then so be it...

If it's any help or makes any difference.... though I doubt it does.... my external drive I use solely for downloading limewire files to.
Is there some *major* difference somewhere between downloading to your primary hard drive, as opposed to an external one....?

Stating the obvious - I do find that having an external hard drive permanently plugged in seems to majorly affect the workings of my pc. I also *get* the fact that Limewire slows everything down.... but how or why should this have anything to do with my *shared* files?

I wanted to decrease wear and tear on my HD by using a ram drive. Could not get LW to accept it (4.18, haven't tried with 5). Any ideas?

well..if the external is USB2 then it will lag things down for various reasons...

if its firewire things should move rather nicely...

I rarely use my 2 USB2 externals...and I've found it damned near impossible to transfer files across those 2 drives...I get occasional delayed write transaction errors when going to either of the externals from an internal, but after I learned I had to go offline and disable my AV (it was scanning the files as they were being transferred) I very rarely have issues any more...

in summation, USB2 drives rather suck..

Ah, the lag time; makes sense. Guess I should look into firewire (thought it was fading out, but I suppose that's because most devices don't require that level of throughput).

Or I could just wait; solid-state HDs are growing in size and speed, while the prices are beginning to fall. My first pc ran at 4.77mHz, had 128k RAM and no mouse. A teen-ager, who uses computers, recently asked me, "What's a floppy disk?" I don't think he's even heard of serial ports and DIP switches. Another kid I know had no idea of how to use a phone with a rotary dial.

I've ALWAYS used an external usb hdd to download ALL of my P2P, and torrent stuff and have NEVER had any problems. Usually maxing out my connection speed at over 700KB/s. down. Right now I have a 1Tb Seagate FreeAgent that hasn't missed a beat. I never put above mentioned files on my OS drive. I'm just sayin...

I use pretty much only USB2 and even USB1 externals. Never had a read/write problem unless a drive was a goner. I had for a while over 900KB/s down. My ex had a 20Mbit line (almost 2.5MB/s) maxed a lot of the time to a USB2 external. Never had a problem.

When I move stuff between USB2 drives it's usually at a speed ranging between 15 and 23MB/s and unless you run a GB box and have nice axx, there is no way in hell you get close to those speeds just downloading.

The AntiVirus predicament Peerless mentions may be valid in some peoples cases although I never noticed it myself. Guess it depends how you're AV is set up and what type it is.

As for shared files disappearing. I have no idea unless your drive changes drive letter on you. But I would think the fluctuations would be much more if that was the case.

Kaspersky's in specific...v 7x....the newer version I think does better...what was happening is that even though a file had already been scanned, when it was moved to a new location it got scanned again...so, the drive is being written to and at the same time the files just put there are being scanned....errors...I can do a USB to USB transfer, but man, its slow...

the biggest disadvantage to USB drives I've seen is the lag in response many times for a request made to that drive....maybe more modern systems do better, but my ASUS P4C800 series MoBo just doesn't really like them I guess...

Have you tried using a third party copying/moving program? I never had any trouble myself, so I have it more for the nice queuing ability, skipping and a probably pseudo speed increase (most likely because I can see actual copy speed, time remaining etc.), but try installing TeraCopy and see if it helps. Copy your files faster with TeraCopy

I use TeraCopy, which definately speeds up file transfers between any two drives. (I wish it would allow filenames to be added to the list, rather than having to select a group while holding cntrl key.) However, transferring files to my external HDD takes a very long time when compared to moving files between internal drives (I think that may have to do with the requests mentioned by Peerless, and my external is a bit old.)

Thanks for all your replies guys :cool: Have taken all advice and info on board....

Still not getting the *missing* shared files thing though :confused:

If I keep Limewire *open*, i.e. set my upload/download bandwidths to zero and don't allow *any* upload slots and don't download anything - overnight for example.... so the next morning I don't have to load everything again.... I find that the amount of files I'm sharing has decreased.
Could be anything from 50-80 files that have *unshared* themselves....
They're all still *in* my *Shared* folder.... but I have to go into it, right click them and *share* them again....

:bangh:

Issue with external drives. Some p2p sharing programs work fine with external HDD's. As you know LW never has, however I've never tried using one with LW 5. Likewise in my experience LW has problems accessing all the files at the moment it opens. Thing about external drives is they are not always 100% active, they tend to sleep a little. There can be a momentary lapse in getting the drive reading which I believe is what affects LW.

On my old computer when opening LW, LW would often even 'forget' that it was directed to share from / download to an external drive. Seemed slow in loading shares from the external drive also.

My advice to you would be to make a backup of your LW preferences, perhaps on a daily basis just before/after you quit LW for the day. Then if LW shows less shares next day, quit LW, replace the preferences folder & restart LW.

I think if LW cannot 'immediately' find a shared file, it simply removes it from its shared list. Exception might be if a user was sending a request for a shared file of yours at same time LW was opening & that might give the 'cannot find file' message.

As for copying files from computer to external for backup purposes, Firewire 800 is more than fast enough for me; more than double the speed of USB. Even Firewire 400 is faster than USB for that purpose. Windows systems might work a little better with USB than macs do, not sure. But then even my external drive listed capabilities lists FW 400 as faster than USB.

Have you considered adding a 1 TB internal HDD?

exactly...and when you need to access it, your system makes a call to it, and it wakes up...not only does this lag things it many times results in momentary freezing of the machine...

USB2 drives to NOT operate at UDMA5 capabilities, which means they are not nearly as fast as modern internal drives...

as previously noted, I use them only for storage of files already acquired, and very occasionally to let others upload from, but I never download to them....

I'm sure we've all considered that. Thing is, I wouldn't want a big, expensive drive running constantly while I'm sharing files all night. (I can tune-out the sound, but it drives my gf nuts). That's why I wanted to use a solid-state device for LW.

I will likely get a BluRay (1/2 TB disks), and a solid-state drive for my OS and programs (my SATA internals total 3/4 TB). The solid-state drives can experience bit decay, and the devices themselves will eventually wear out with multiple overwrites; so they aren't perfect, but they'll extend laptop use.

Additional Drives
 

Well Guys

I have always used external USB drives to store and share my LW downloads and I have never had any problems.

However, I am somewhat doubtful about Blackhorse 70V's pro solid-state drive stance. My understanding of this drives current state is that they are very expensive and unreliable. In fact, GB for GB solid states cost about 5 to 10 times as much as ordinary drives and have been prone to fail.

Theoretically, because there are no moving parts in solid state drives they have the capability to be ultra reliable but, personally, I don't think that they will hit that reliability/price point for another couple of years.



UK Bob

I have - yes.... it would save me so much hassle....
Thing is though - I only have a 160GB drive and 2.01Ghz, 768 MB Of Ram - would the motherboard be able to handle it?
The engineer (from where I bought the pc initially) says not....
Obviously his word isn't set in stone and his opinion isn't necessarily bang on accurate....

What I have thought of doing is to buy two 250GB hard drives, download to one of them and back up to the other....

Good idea or not....?

I don't see why not. If you can't have a 1TB drive installed, then your PC must be not old, but ancient. Same with installing two 250GB drives.

Thanks Sleepless :)

Forgive me - I'm not the most *au fait* with computers :rolleyes:
My pc is far from being old.... but surely I don't have the 'capacity' to *deal with* a 1TB drive....?

I'm low on hard drive space - hence why I'm downloading to an external....
At present, I'm downloading to a 160GB external hard drive - with nowhere to back it up to.
The plan is to get two 250GB drives; download to one and back up to the other.
Will my hard drive be able to cope with two 250GB hard drives plugged in at the same time?

I'm not thick - there's just certain aspects of pc stuff I'm not that familiar with....

do you have 2 usb inputs?

I run 2 at one time every now and again...no biggy, just the aforementioned issues with USB drives...do NOT run an external HDD through a hub....talk about slow...sheesh...and other issues associated with the massive lagging cause by using a hub....

I run 3 externals constantly. 1 1TB and 2 300GB. Never had any trouble. My specs are 1.7GHz Intel Pentium M, 1 GB DDR2 RAM. 4 USB2 slots.

Depends on your specs. As you can see my main sharing computer doesn't have much power and doesn't need it either.

External USB Drives
 

PickaxeFairy

First off, my PC is older than yours and I have five external USB hard drives and one external USB DVD writer.

I bought my PC in October 2002 and it had only 4 x USB1.1 ports (as well as a 60GB HD C:\ drive and only 512MB ram), I eventually added 2 x PCI to USB2.0 cards which gave me 8 x USB2.0 external ports and it is these ports that my five external USB hard drives are connected to. And as I said in my previous post, I have had no problems with any of them, i.e 2 x 160GB, 2 x 250GB and 1 x 500GB.

Just out of interest, I have changed my original 60GB HD for a 300GB one and added a second internal 500GB HD, and I have had absolutely no power problems.

So, connecting any external drives to your set up, whether they are 1TB USB HDs, 2 x 250GB HDs, etc., they will not cause you any problems whatsoever.

Finally, as you can imagine I am constantly swapping data/info between my externals, my internals to externals and back again, also without any problems.

Hope this helps



UK Bob

Thanks for your reply Bob - much appreciated. :)

Your answer is most encouraging - I've been at sixes and sevens for a while now over this....
Various different *experts* have been giving me all these various *should dos and shouldn't dos*....
It's doing my head in! :bangh:

I hasten to add - I refer not to all the helpful peeps on here :p
You all obviously know what you're talking about - and you've been worth your weight in gold to me in the past....

Who I'm talking about is the *I proclaim to know everything pc related - but in reality I don't actually know what the hell I'm talking about* guys they send when you've got an extended warranty. :D Oh come on - you've gotta laugh! :p
You've all been helpful to me in your own different ways, believe me. :PEACE:

I still haven't quite made up my mind as to whether I'll upgrade my 160GB drive to a 500GB or 1TB - or whether I'll keep things as they are and just use a couple of 250/500GB external drives....

Whatever I end up doing - all suggestions, advice and info will be a big part of my final decision....

Thanks all!

Little update if anyone's interested :p

I ended up going with a couple of 320GB external drives in the end - one to download to and one to back up to....
(PC World have got a pretty good deal on WD 320GB external hard drives atm if anyone's interested ;))

I have to say though.... I do notice quite a difference in Limewire's performance when I download to an external, as opposed to my pc's main drive.... There's quite a bit of crashing and freezing tends to go on - which I can't say I ever experienced when I was downloading to my main drive.
Having said that though - I kinda feel 'safer' downloading to an external and not my pc hard drive. Though maybe that's just me....

Stating the obvious here - if something major happens with your pc and you've got no copes of anything.... well you're up the proverbial creek without that all important paddle! :p
I find it quite unbelievable how many people *still* don't back up - then whinge and moan when all their documents, photos and music are lost....
:rolleyes:

about the only time they are truly lost is when the HDD completely dies....

if the OS dies, then you have various options as how to retrieve data from the drive..

I use a dual boot system with the OS's on separate HDDs and if one goes south, I just need boot into the other OS and retrieve the data from the drive before I reformat it and install a new copy of the OS...

one can also buy another HDD, install the OS on it and then view the other drive and get files off of it, remove all traces of the old OS and then use the drive as a data drive...

there are of course also data recovery tools

Thanks for the tips Peerless. :cool: At least I'll know what to do now if things should go a bit awry...


Who am I kidding??! As if I'd know the first place to start.... :o
I'll just get my *male* mate to sort it out. Simples! :laugh_2:

Using External Drives
 

PickaxeFairy

You said: I am somewhat surprised, especially as I have never (ever) experienced this slowing down in performance, crashing and freezing you are experiencing.

I've just looked at the USB drive you are using, it looks great, but I can't tell if it has an external power supply unit.

BUY THE WD Portable Storage ONLINE AT PC WORLD.

If it hasn't, I would strongly suggest that you change your drives for ones that do.



UK Bob

External drives tend not to be active 100% of time & that upsets LW.

yep...the occasional signal sent to a sleeping drive and awaiting it to respond can send a lot of programs (and even the OS) into fits...

You're not kidding!

My OS seems to go scatty when I've got an external plugged in....

If I should want to go onto Google, for instance - well it's just ridiculous the time it takes. It's got to the point now where I don't even bother even attempting to open up other windows when I've got Limewire going and an external plugged in. Which - if I should happen to be on Limewire for a rather long period of time - which is quite regularly, I hasten to add.... well you can imagine. It's an absolute pain in the rear! :mad2:

Even something simple like being in my download window and going to check my upload window, or vice versa. There's this ridiculous delay....

And god forbid if I should happen to be downloading at the time....
When my pc finally sees its way clear to sorting itself out, that host I was downloading that got to have track or album from has gone off-line. :bangh:

Touble with Externals
 

You know PickaxeFairy

It is obvious that something is wrong with your setup, as I said before my system is older than yours and I have used both Windows XP Home and Windows XP Pro and I have never experienced the problems you seem to be going through. Even when I used the USB V1.1 ports that came with my PC.

Again, I have five external USB drives, three made by Lacie and the other two by Gericom. All of them are plugged into USB2.0 ports, provided by 2 x 4 port USB2.0 PCI cards (similar to one displayed here: dabs.com - Best Value 4 PORT USB2 PCI CARD (US102)), and each external has it's own power supply unit, i.e. all draw their own electricity from my lead, (similar to this: Currys partmaster.co.uk - Avix 13A 6 Gang Surge Protection Extension Lead With Telephone Socket) and so does not use power from my PC.

So if your externals have their own power units then they should not slow your PC down or have slow start up problems.

I would suggest that that something is wrong and you should have your setup examined.



UK Bob

did the drive come with an install cd?

if so, then I hope you ran it...it probably enables proper data transfer settings via a driver...

also, what type of system do you have?

are you able to get into the BIOS and specify settings for your USB capability?

if so then one thing to do is to disable legacy usb support, enabling that can many times cause issues....

Thank you ukbobboy01 for all your advice.... will give those external drives with power supply a bash....
I can certainly appreciate the benefits.
:xeri_ok1ani:

Peerless - I really appreciate your reply.... I just don't understand what BIOS Settings and Legacy USB Support means.... :confused:

In terms of an install cd - what I do know is that my drive didn't come with one.... so I can't do anything in that respect....


With regard to my ridiculously slow speeds and stupid delays - a thought occurred to me....
Could this maybe be something to do with AVG perhaps and not my actual pc?
Limewire and AVG running at once - surely that's gotta make a difference to pc speed and performance....?

hmmm....well if AVG is actively scanning the files on the drive then that WILL cause bottlenecks...once the files are scanned though that should stop....

if you don't know what the BIOS is then perhaps you should Google the concept and do some reading....in a nutshell its where the hardware for your computer is controlled...if you own let's say a Dell then you will have virtually no ability to do anything in the BIOS...if its a custom build then you can control about everything..

It's not that I've never heard of BIOS. I have. Just never really been in a situation where I've needed to find out what it was all about....

Now obviously I am :p

Thanks Peerless - will do the google thing ;)

Not sure if this is of any help BIOS - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia but wikipedia is a great place to search for info. :)

post the specs for your machine and I will see what I can dig up or already know about it...if its an ASUS MoBo then I'm sure I can be of some assistance as I've been using those boards since the PIII days....

you should be able to find some sort of tutorial or manual for your machine that will detail how to get into your BIOS (hitting delete during the boot process is what works for my machines) and what settings are changeable...as noted with many manufactured machines you have severe limitations as to what you can do, and with machines that are custom you have a plethora of things you can do...

heck its even possible that for some reason USB2 is not enabled on your MoBo, or as I noted if USB legacy support is enabled it might be causing issues...

Many thanks Peerless. :xeri_ok1ani:

System details as follows:-

OS Version - Windows XP 2002
Firewall - AVG Full Edition
Ram - 2.01GHz, 768MB Of RAM
Hard Disk Space - 36.6GB
Connection - Broadband (20MB)
Limewire Version - 4.18.8
ISP - Virgin Media

Thanks too to the rest of you for your replies and continued *much appreciated* help....

Happy New Year to you all! :)

who made the machine?....if its a custom build, then what is the MOtherBoard..i.e. what info I am looking for is your ability to play around with USB settings

you state XP 2002....if its not of SP1 or later I'm pretty sure you are in usb1.0 mode...I believe you need to be in usb2.0 mode for full transfer abilities and such...

Yes - it might actually help if I told you the make and model.... :rolleyes:

It's an Acer Aspire T180 Desktop with Windows XP 2002 SP3

I can't seem to find squat on specifics of that BIOS...

the best I come up with is this: http://support.acer.com/acerpanam/ma...ID%20Guide.pdf

one of the sub sections is "Setting Up The BIOS"...yep, its for RAID, but it does give a picture of the main screen of the BIOS...my best guess is the USB configuration settings are in the Advanced Chipset Features section

follow the directions in that manual to get into the bios from boot up, then use the arrow keys to navigate to the chipset section and hit enter, that will pop up what you can play with...you may have to use the arrows and hit enter again to navigate further (can't say as I can find no manual for the BIOS)...

for my BIOS, on an Asus P4C800xxx MoBo, the usb settings have the ability to enable usb 2.0 and to also set its speed (high preferably)..I also take the time to disable legacy usb support as that is known to cause issues in some cases and having it disabled causes no use of usb problems for me...

Upgrading an old USB 1.1 PC to USB2.0
 

Peerless & PickaxeFairy

I just want to make a suggestion here that may save PickaxeFairy a lot of hassle.

Now, as I said before, my PC is older than PickaxeFairy's and I had the problem of running external USB2.0 HDs on and older PC with only USB1.1 facilities.

Well, the easiest thing to do is install "PCI to USB2.0 card", available from Dabs 4 Port USB2.0 PCI Card (with CD-ROM manual and drivers). It can be installed in minutes, there is no fiddling with the BIOS or anything else, just straight forward plug and play USB2.0 facilities without any fuss or bother.

PickaxeFairy may require help to open her PC to install this card but it is very easy to do and only takes a few minutes.


UK Bob

that could be a viable option, but the machine is supposed to support usb 2.0 according to the rather sparse manual that is available....my thought is that possible usb 2.0 is not enabled in the bios...

another thought is that for some reason windoze might not be operating correctly....here is a little article that explains how to verify if usb 2.0 is being used: http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/connec...faq_intro.mspx

Thanks Bob and Peerless for your replies....

Will look into all your suggestions and advice over the weekend....

Your help and input is very much appreciated!

:xeri_ok1ani:

Thanks for your answers Peerless & Bob. :xeri_ok1ani:

Peerless - Have checked out the info you gave me....
Seems I am USB 2.0 'enabled'....

If I'm being totally honest though - the rest of it was like a foreign language to me....

I get the concept of it all (well kind of :p) - but I guess I'm just not confident enough to fiddle about with stuff that I don't *really* understand or know enough about. The last thing I wanna do is muck about with my pc when I don't have sufficient knowledge to know what I'm actually doing....

Obviously I need to look into this subject more comprehensively - but I'm grateful to you for getting me started and on the right track....






Bob - I read what you said - and checked out that 4 Port USB2.0 PCI Card you mentioned....

It's just the opening of my pc that worries me slightly....
Tbh, I wouldn't have the first clue on how to go about it....

Sure, I know how to open my pc.... but 'installing' things - well that's a whole different ball game....

I am though still under warranty.... so if I was to go ahead and buy said item - maybe I could get the engineer to fit it....?

I had a computer with USB 2.0 on the back, while the front USB ports were 1.0.
I don't know why they did that. Anyway, I mention it just in case.

As far as installing a PCI card, it's not much more difficult than changing a lightbulb (and you don't need anyone to turn the ladder!). You probaby know someone who has installed something; ask them to show you how. It really doesn't get any easier than installing a USB card.

Cheers Blackhorse. :)

So this installation thing isn't that difficult then....?
Well if that's the case and there's a chance it might improve performance - then I guess it's worth a try....

I might even take the bull by the horns, get brave and have a go myself....

Now that could prove interesting! :D

When it came to it - I kinda thought better of it....

Me being the dozy cow I am - I'm sure I'd have done something I shouldn't have and *inadvertently* invalidated my warranty. :rolleyes:
I've therefore taken the easy way out and got an extended warranty bloke out :D

He's coming tomorrow afternoon....

Bearing in my mind my recent pc 'issues' - is there anything I *really* need to ask or bring to his attention....?
Things perhaps I haven't thought of that one of you lot has....?

All replies/suggestions will be most appreciated. :)

seems as if the issue is pretty straight forward...USB issues are plaguing you, simple as that....

I agree with you Peerless....

Am just rather interested as to what the so called 'experts' have to say....

They've not exactly helped me much in the past - it has to be said....

They come round, fiddle about with my pc, push some buttons, act like they know what they're doing, re-start - and lo and behold - everything's still exactly as crap as it was before....

I pity the poor guy who's coming round tomorrow - I'm gonna keep him hostage 'til he sorts everything out! :D