2 portable hard drive conflict

ashatron · 30 Jun 2010 at 14:12

Hi,

i have 2 portable hard drives.
i bought a new portable seagate 640gb portable hard drive because i needed more room than my Western Digital passport 250gb could offer.

Both are usb powered.

Now the problem im having is when using them both simultaneously, my computer can freeze up for a few seconds, not only that, on the 250gb western digital drive it starts to act strange - not showing folders that i know are there (and are visible when i reboot with the WD drive only), and then some folder names become a string of random characters.

This problem happened when i tried to use my brothers western digital drive as well as mine at the same time, but i put it down to the two drives in use being identical.

Can anyone tell me why this may be?
is it possible to use 2 portable hard drives at once?

Thanks.

____________
windows XP
Laptop - dual core 2.33, 3gig RAM.

lukext · 30 Jun 2010 at 16:05

It maybe that both hard drives at once are drawing too much power from the USB and the computer cant handle powering both drives simultaneously.

ashatron · 30 Jun 2010 at 16:32

lukext said:
It maybe that both hard drives at once are drawing too much power from the USB and the computer cant handle powering both drives simultaneously.

i think thats it...thanks for the help dude

now i decide weather to send my new one back and get a mains powered one, OR keep them both and never use them simultaneously...

my current Western Digital 250gb is about 3 years old, should i expect that to fail soon?

lukext · 30 Jun 2010 at 19:02

happy to help!

You shouldn't expect it to fail, HDDs usually last more than 3years provided you dont thrash them!

welshdragon · 30 Jun 2010 at 19:04

Get a mains powered one - my wd elements boots with the pc then turns off with it. Good solid driver and very cheap now

thingemajib · 30 Jun 2010 at 19:24

i got a freecom portable that only came with a USB cable, but still had a DC socket. My old system was unable to power it frim usb alone, so i had to email freecom and they gave me the choice of a wall adaptor os a split usb cable (so that it plugged into two usb ports to draw more power). I used the usb splitter.

in other words, have you tried emailing seagate to see if you could do something similar?

ashatron · 1 Jul 2010 at 15:04

Thanks all, look likes a mains powered one is the way to go.
I just hope they will refund me after its been opened. I bought it from the biggest river in the world, do you think they will?