A word of warning here to the XS Drive II. I spent my last day off fighting with this PHD after I had fitted my spare 60GB hdd. When I transfered anything, -and I tried all the storage media (SD, Sonystick, Microdrive, CFII),- the transferred data looked like goobledegook (?) in Explorer when hooked up via USB2.0 port or direct, and the data was unusable.
At first I thought it was the storage media, or the hub, or the data, then the Fat32 format, then the HP laptop, then the Toshiba Laptop etc etc.
The findings are as follows:
If your are taking a hdd from a laptop, you MUST remove the hibernation partition placed after the boot sector. This is placed there automatically when you use the restore CD's supplied with most laptops or when is pre-installed. This PHD recognises only the first patition, regardless of its function, and so if the 1st partition is 200MB, then it will only transfer that much data, even though you have another approx. 59.8GB left...
This PHD will not accept hdd's greater than 30G, anything larger must be partitioned to less than this. There is nothing in the documentation which refers to this, and it was a last act of desperation after changing this hdd in & out of my laptops countless times... (Here is plug for Toshiba) fortunately the hdd on the Portege models are very easy to remove (2 screws, one cover and pull it free).
This whole thing is problematic if you do not have access to a laptop and/ or you are not comfortable with removing HDD's etc (the HP Xe3 you have to pull various covers off, remove the keyboard etc). Partition Magic 8.0 does not support partitioning over USB2.0 either via a hub or direct connection. There may be another partitioning software package available that allows this, please enlighten us if there is.
For such a small item, there are a large number of problems which could be avoided if documented correctly, I will not list all here, mail me if you have any questions.
Now that it is working, it is practical and until now fulfills my requirements.
For all you electrical engineers out there, PLEASE design an adaptor that senses device voltage and amps automatically (output). I have a number of devices, and I HATE all the adaptors I have to carry around. I am sure I am not the only one who has this problem.
