Hi,
I purchased a Freecom 80GB portable 2.5in USB hard-drive for our office, for backup purposes. The device is supposed to be bus-powered, which was no problem for the desktop PC I initially set it up on. (By setup, I mean reformatting as a TrueCrypt device-hosted volume -- probably not relevant but better be thorough eh?)
However, when I inserted the drive into my boss's laptop (spec supplied, running XP Pro) it bluescreened instantly reporting a power surge. There was a lot more info, but the drive itself was loudly bashing its head so I thought it best to power-off immediately.
At first I thought TrueCrypt was the problem (with the drive not being in a Windows-native format on first insertion) but when I then reformatted it to NTFS, the same thing happened. Needless to say the boss was not up for further experimentation or analysis by this point, and took the laptop away until I could find out more.
When I inserted the drive on my own XP laptop, I got a "danger" notification (red cross; I've mostly seen this reported as a yellow-triangle balloon in reports) again telling me of a power-surge on the USB hub. Nevertheless the drive did not flip out and I was able to use it without issues. My laptop is a Toshiba Satellite A30, of a similar age to the boss's Dell, which dual-boots XP Home and Gentoo Linux (I'd already used the drive under Gentoo with no issues at all). Its USB ports are USB 2.0, whereas the boss's are USB 1.1 (or possibly even 1.0) if this is relevant. Also, it was on mains power whereas the boss's, at the time of the incident, was on battery.
Freecom don't ship an AC adapter with the drive, but will supply one free of charge if needed. Obviously however this makes it rather less attractive for my boss (its whole purpose was to be portable and fuss-free). The drive was advertised as low-power, so if it needs more than the laptop can give, chances are most other models out there will have similar problems.
This is what I'd like to know:
1) Is it at all possible that this can be solved with software/firmware updates? (I found an epic thread on CNET forums about Dell laptops giving bogus power-surge balloons after XP SP2, but obviously this is a bit more serious than a balloon)
2) Is it likely that the drive might work on bus-power if the boss's laptop were on mains power?
3) Would removing other USB devices (she also had a USB mouse connected at the time) leave more power available for the drive?
Thanks for any info you can give. I'd like to have my facts straight next time I see the boss, and within the return-period if she decides it's not worth keeping.
