Using my external drive at college.

gropingmantis · 10 Jan 2012 at 13:28

I have a 1TB WD My Passport external hard drive.

Recently I wanted to take it into college with some portable programs on to do some work. However because I am a lowly student and not an ethereal admin I cannot install anything on any computer (and rightly so looking at some of the users around me).

However this means that when I connect the drive and windows attempts to install the WD drivers for it, it won't install so I cannot use my HDD :mad:

Is there a way around this? Making the drive identify as a pen drive (which work fine) with custom firmware perhaps?

Jay794 · 10 Jan 2012 at 13:32

USB drives shouldn't fail the driver install, they work the same way as pen drives (or so I thought)

I thought it was just programs that your couldn't install

gropingmantis · 10 Jan 2012 at 13:46

Jay794 said:
USB drives shouldn't fail the driver install, they work the same way as pen drives (or so I thought)

I thought it was just programs that your couldn't install

Apparently not. The balloon pops up to say that it has downloaded the driver and is installing then the error pops up to say that I do not have the correct privileges.

Essexraptor · 10 Jan 2012 at 14:03

Or just shift your "portable programs" to a pen drive?

gropingmantis · 10 Jan 2012 at 14:06

Essexraptor said:
Or just shift your "portable programs" to a pen drive?

I have done that for now but it is painfully slow and not big enough for all the programs I want. I guess I could get a Corsair GT or Mushkin Ventura Pro but that is a bit of a waste of money when I have a perfectly good 1TB sat here.

Essexraptor · 10 Jan 2012 at 14:11

Agreed... but it looks like the network admin is doing his job and preventing large drives from being connected

Trying to circumvent this by trying to fool the system would be just to much trouble

IMO

gropingmantis · 10 Jan 2012 at 14:19

Why is connecting large drives bad? It is the college's fault in the first place for only having **** outdated software that isn't even installed on half the computers.

JonJ678 · 10 Jan 2012 at 15:31

WD sometimes package software with their drives as a difficult-to-disable cd image, stored on flash somewhere. This way the end user cant loose their software cd.

I would imagine that this is where the conflict is arising. It's possible reformatting the disk will solve the problem, though equally it may not. I think there's some information on disabling the built-in software online, but don't have a link to this.

Have you considered leaving the programs on the college computer? You probably have some personal storage space allocated, I have vlc portable and dropbox portable on mine. No admin rights needed.

gropingmantis · 10 Jan 2012 at 15:53

JonJ678 said:
WD sometimes package software with their drives as a difficult-to-disable cd image, stored on flash somewhere. This way the end user cant loose their software cd.

I would imagine that this is where the conflict is arising. It's possible reformatting the disk will solve the problem, though equally it may not. I think there's some information on disabling the built-in software online, but don't have a link to this.

Have you considered leaving the programs on the college computer? You probably have some personal storage space allocated, I have vlc portable and dropbox portable on mine. No admin rights needed.

Yeah we get a whopping 100MB which is barely enough for my documents let alone any programs. Also dropbox is blocked as I already tried that. Will have a look online for disabling built in software.

Surveyor · 10 Jan 2012 at 18:30

You college has obviously blocked external storage devices from being connected for security reasons.

It's the same where I work. Any form of external storage device will not work on our PC's: memory sticks, mobile phones, digital cameras etc.

Attempting to connect one is a conduct and dicipline offence and you may find there are similar consequences if you attempt to circumvent the college's security.

gropingmantis · 10 Jan 2012 at 20:06

Surveyor said:
You college has obviously blocked external storage devices from being connected for security reasons.

It's the same where I work. Any form of external storage device will not work on our PC's: memory sticks, mobile phones, digital cameras etc.

Attempting to connect one is a conduct and dicipline offence and you may find there are similar consequences if you attempt to circumvent the college's security.

No because pen drives work.

Surveyor · 10 Jan 2012 at 21:49

gropingmantis said:
No because pen drives work.

Fair enough.

But trying to disable whatever restrictions they have put in place is likely to get you in a heap of trouble.

daver · 10 Jan 2012 at 21:50

Have a chat with sys admin and see if there isn't something they can work out for you?

gropingmantis · 10 Jan 2012 at 22:31

Surveyor said:
Fair enough.

But trying to disable whatever restrictions they have put in place is likely to get you in a heap of trouble.

Its not disabling a restriction. The issue is that the external HDD tries to identify as an internal HDD rather than a removable drive. If it would identify as a removable drive there would be no issue.