Back in April my dad bought me a 120 GB external drive.

Windows XP had some major issues with it. It's supposed to be USB1 / USB2 compatable, but XP only saw "USB2". This is a problem as my computer has only USB1 ports.

So I've been using a bus card to enable a USB2 connection.

This is fun: plug the pcmcia card in and the computer shuts off like a switch was flipped.

If I plugged it in then turned on the computer the computer still died.

After booting up a second time with the card still in Windows could see it.

Lot of hassle for a dumb hard drive eh?



Today I tried connecting the external hard drive to Linux. Using the USB1/USB2 cord and plugging it striaght in to a free USB slot, it works (like the manual said it was supposed to work)! No more bus card related shut downs as I didn't use the bus card.

I'll format it with ext2 later. Currently it's a fat32.


I now have 110 GB at my disposal. No more CD-R backups needed!

lol, isn't it wonderful how (in certain cases) windows fails to do exactly what it is supposed to be best at?

I remember my father dual booting window 2000 pro and some linux distro. I believe it was Red Hat or Fedora. Not only did RedHat see his winmodem... it configured it and he was able to dial out with it in no time flat. This was in shocking contrast to windows... which needed the drivers downloaded. A little catch 22 when you're talking about a modem.

Lucky thing linux worked right out of the box because it allowed him to download the drivers without trying to hunt up an external modem.

Funny, isn't it?

I bought a Microsoft USB optical mouse and I had problem installing it on Windows98 (using the included CD). I restarted and booted from my Debian installation and it was recognized immediately.