We have a Vista PC with an external 1TB drive on USB.

Recently our Computer guy told us that Vista will start much faster if the drive is not connected during start-up.

Sure enough he was right, Vista starts a LOT FASTER without it.

Questions:

1) Are there any settings in Vista to prevent it from checking this HDD during start-up?

2) If not and re-connect is the only way, are there any means to make Vista maintain the share settings of this drive when re-connected after start-up?

It does maintain the drive letter but the share settings have to be entered new after every re-connect.

This drive is used as a back-up center for all PCs on our LAN so full share is essential.

Question from my son:

can he install a program (game in his case) on an external USB HDD?

If this is possible what has to be taken care of?

In my opinion it is not a good idea even if possible but I can't answer my son's question without having direct knowledge myself.

opalhort

1) Are there any settings in Vista to prevent it from checking this HDD during start-up?

No, not that I'm aware of.

2) If not and re-connect is the only way, are there any means to make Vista maintain the share settings of this drive when re-connected after start-up?

I don't think a permanent share can be created on a removable drive. I could be wrong though... There is however, a workable solution which involves the use logon or startup scripts to create the share automatically.

   net share [sharename]=[drive:path]

  Note: For net share command syntax, type in: net share /? at the command prompt.

For example, if you wanted to share drive X: (external usb hdd), and name the share "My Share", the command would be:

net share "My Share"=X:

All you have to do is open Notepad, enter the appropriate command and save the file with a .BAT or .CMD extension. Note: When creating sharenames with spaces, be sure to enclose the sharename with quotation marks " " otherwise it won't work. To have the script execute automatically during startup, place the .BAT or .CMD file in the Start menu >> All Programs >> Startup folder. GPEDIT can also be used to execute the script at startup, if you prefer to use Group Policy instead.

Question from my son:

can he install a program (game in his case) on an external USB HDD?

If this is possible what has to be taken care of?

In my opinion it is not a good idea even if possible but I can't answer my son's question without having direct knowledge myself.

Yes -- but will the game work across the LAN or when the USB HDD is plugged into other machines? This I can't answer with any certainty. Some games will read data from the registry and may also have system file dependencies while others don't. It really depends on the game. You'll have to try it and see.

Hope this helps!

You can set an USB drive for Windows as fixed drive in the Device Manager and not as a removeable one. It is faster then and gets a Recycle Bin. But don't unplug it then when it is running. Perhaps this helps for your share. But I never tried it for a share.

In respect of the questions of your son. An USB drive has the fraction of the speed of an internal drive because of the low speed of the USB interface. In addition to this many USB devices use the CPU for their purpose - it is a very cheap hardware interface moving a lot of tasks to the CPUs. So not a good idea to put games there if every frame of the game counts.

If you have problems with drive letters look here - it is a great freeware.

http://www.uwe-sieber.de/usbdlm_e.html