Ext HDD's greater than 137GB under Win ME

[dencorso]

Tried extracting it from.

Using what? WinZip? And what was the result?

I just tested it here with WinZip 9.0 SR-1, WinRAR 3.93 and 7-Zip 4.65, and all three were able to extract USBHUB20.SYS from NUSB33E.EXE (also found as NUSB33.EXE... the E only means it's the US English version). So I believe you must have succeeded. I suggest you rename the version 4.90.3000.11 present in your machine from USBHUB20.SYS to USBHUB20.VIA and then add the version 5.0.2195.6891 extracted from NUSB33 (both the renaming and the addition must be done in true DOS). Then you should use your machine for at least a few days with the new USBHUB20.SYS for us to be sure whether it solved the issue or not.

[dencorso]

NUSB33 is downloadable from here or here.

[piikea]

See my previous post - was called away suddenly before I was able to finalize it.

OK, got it & extracted. I had been looking in nusb.zip from a thread in this forum. I can't do anything w/ it at the moment since Scandisk is running on the ext HD. Was just getting a head start by locating & getting it for future use. I can go ahead & replace the file just can't reboot to see what happens.

Edited October 4, 2010 by piikea

[dencorso]

No, in fact you cannot. If you try to replace it with it loaded, as it is now, since you're running scandisk, you'll probably get an access denied. Or crash the system. Now, we don't want to risk that, do we?

[piikea]

No, I'm not doing anything w/ it just yet.

[dencorso]

BTW, you should add Usher's tweak (adapted to Win ME) to your machine's configuration, for real safe access to Safe Mode, with more than 1 GiB RAM: just copy your [vcache] section from your SYSTEM.INI to your SYSTEM.CB, that exists in the same folder. This is not related to our discussion here, but I keep forgetting to tell you about it, so I decided to do it now, before I forget again.

[piikea]

At the present rate it is going to take 2 days EACH to Scandisk the (3) 300GB partitions.

[dencorso]

Yeah. I knew it'd very long. On the bright side, you may never need to do it again, if all goes well. And certainly not all the partitions, in any case. And the normal scandisk, whithout surface check is quite fast, even for such big partitions. So patience. Resist the urge to interrupt it and let it reach the end by itself.

[piikea]

It's tough....I can do very little on the computer in addition to that right now& its like molasses slooooow. I could try Norton's Scandisk on the next one - I don't recall if that's any faster or not.

[dencorso]

You can do one then do other things for a couple of days before checking the second and so on... Why do all 3 in a row?

[piikea]

You can do one then do other things for a couple of days before checking the second and so on... Why do all 3 in a row?

True. I will have to do a few things in between but I am in somewhat of a "hurry" to transfer some stuff to the ext HD since my internal HD's are filled to the hilt & as things are I cannot add anything nor do much w/ no space to work with. This whole process is going to take even a bit longer. (As well as the BSOD's, Usher's Tweak, etc.)

[piikea]

Well after 6 days worth of Thorough Scandisk-ing the drive is up & ready. Thanks to dencorso, jaclaz & others who have helped along the way.

Now to try & deal w/ the frequent bluescreen errors I'm getting now. It has happened at various times: sometimes connecting, sometimes disconnecting, also w/o any ext HD connected & I'm accessing different partitions on the int HD's. Also several times after disconnecting it & using computer for awhile then go to restart it will happen & basically freeze the computer.

[dencorso]

Great! Congratulations! That big HDD was a tough cookie!

When did the BSODs start happening? After adding USB20DRV or even before it you did already have them? You may be having BSODs for more than one reason... is the message in the BSOD's always the same?

[piikea]

When did the BSODs start happening? After adding USB20DRV or even before it you did already have them? You may be having BSODs for more than one reason... is the message in the BSOD's always the same?

No, never had this issue at all before the changes made to try & get this ext HD going. You know I hadn't really paid close attention to what the blue screens actually said because they seem to be the sort of generic ones that don't tell you much except maybe a long string of random numbers/letters & saying press Ctl Alt Del to restart, etc. I will take note next time it happens & see.

Edited October 11, 2010 by piikea

[dencorso]

Did you do this:

As for the BSODs, my guess is the USBHUB20.SYS v. 4.90.3000.1 installed by USB20DRV is great for VIA chipsets but not so much for Intel chipsets, which is your case. I'd like to substitute it for the one present in NUSB 3.3, which is v. 5.0.2195.6891. You can extract it from the NUSB33 installer by opening it with 7-zip. But it's best to install it from true DOS.

and nothing changed?