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About Hard Disk Drive Docks

I'm thinking of buying a drive dock to put my unused large HDD to use. I will also probably use the dock to backup files and swap the drives regularly.

I have a few questions though:

• Are they noisy?
• I plan to use them via USB (because I don't think I have eSata connectors), am I gonna want to kill myself every time I backup? (I know it's supposed to be 480 Mbps, but how realistic is this?)
• Do you recommend a particular model? (I was thinking about this Startech HDD dock)

Thank you

USB Keyboard and Mouse slow to activate using docking station for Lenovo T430

I just recently upgraded to a T430. Happy with the laptop but one thing I find annoying is that when I use it through the docking station - it takes several minutes ie 3-5 for the USB keyboard and mouse plugged into the docking station to be recognized / activated.

It never used to take this long with my T410. Any thoughts on ow I can speed this up?

Do laptop docking stations have their own MAC addresses?

My laptop has an ethernet connection, and there's another on the docking station.

Can I connect using both at the same time? Will they have different MAC addresses?

I'm assuming the ethernet port on the doc is just a passthru to the onboard ethernet - is that incorrect?

My Laptop does not switch to wired connection when put into a docking station. Is this normal?

I have a Dell 6430u laptop for my job. I usually work off wireless, however when I place my laptop BACK on my docking station, it does not recognize my LAN network. I continues to use wireless. Is this normal? If not, how can I correct it.

Hard drive docking station

I figured it would be easier to get a multi-bay docking station for my hard drives instead of buying separate enclosures for each one.

My question is this: if I docked two hard drives and wanted to transfer data between them, would the transfer speeds be any better/worse than if I was using two separate enclosures connected to two separate usb 3.0 ports?

Ubuntu: How to set each workspace to a separate monitor

I have a brand-new t-500 Laptop with docking station, and a Samsung SyncMaster T220 connected to it. The OS is Ubuntu 8.04 LTS.

I would like to set up the workspaces, so that the right one would be shown at the external monitor, and the left one would be displayed on the laptop.

I have tried the advice given here - rearranging the displays at the screen configuration tool, but without success - the laptop screen just shows the upper left corner of the SyncMaster, and the screens just overlap again when I rerun the screen config tool (Called "Screen resolution" in my version).

Any help?

Udi

Solution to remember a window's size and position for laptop built-in monitor vs external monitor on Windows?

Some laptops, like mine, are so easy to dock/undock. So, I do that all the time. When docked, my screen is Full HD. When undocked, it's smaller. So, everytime I dock/undock my window arrangements get messed up.

Does anyone know of a solution that could make my laptop monitor-aware and restore the arrangements of my windows based on the monitor being used?

I'm on Windows 8, by the way.

IDE/PATA high-speed hard drive dock

I frequently need to access bare drives for backups and need a quick, high-speed way to deal with them.

There are a multitude of SATA hard drive docks (for example), but I have a lot of IDE/PATA (hereafter "IDE") drives that I would like to be able to use similarly. There are IDE-to-SATA adapters so you can plug your IDE hard drive into a SATA port, so I don't see any reason why you couldn't use the same technology to have a native dock, yet none seems to exist.

Now, I'm aware that 3.5" IDE drives do not have a specification for the layout of the connector, and therefore can't be slapped into a dock the same way a SATA drive could, but 2.5" PATA drives do. In fact, I'm not terribly interested in supporting 3.5" drives. It would be nice, but I deal with them far less frequently than 2.5" drives.

Also, I'd very much like for the connection to the computer be faster than USB, preferably eSATA, I don't want to be spending time mounting a drive inside an enclosure, I don't want bare drives lying around with a cable hanging off of them, and I'd prefer a single dock rather than two.

What seems like the ideal solution to me would be a regular SATA→eSATA dock and some sort of screwless adapter for IDE drives, but I'm open to any suggestions, regardless of my stated preferences, but which are, in some sort of order of preference:

1. high-speed (faster than USB, at least)
2. holder for drive (not just a cable)
3. no complicated enclosure
4. support for 3.5" IDE drives
5. single dock

Updates:

Here's a 3.5" IDE to 3.5" SATA docking adapter that could be part of the solution. Weird. I figured that would be the impossible part.

I was hoping to find something like this 2.5" to 3.5" SATA chassis that would take a 44-pin IDE drive internally.

It looks like the Vantec EZ Swap EX comes awfully close. It has its own bay dock, but it looks like the SATA ports on the back are spaced properly, even if they're not aligned quite properly. Unfortunately, the proper position is at the very edge of the drive, which means that the docks' connectors are at the very edge of their recesses, which means there's no way to fit it in there.

Change Windows font size when laptop is docked

I just upgraded from a tower to a laptop at work. Hooray for working from home.

Windows 7's default font size (125%) looks good on my 140dpi laptop display (15.4" 1920x1080), but it looks rather pre-school on my 94dpi main monitor (24" 1920x1200).

Is there any way to have Windows automatically change the font size when I dock my laptop?

Is there a general method to determine if a laptop can support 2x external monitors?

Question: Is there a general method, which would let me determine if a laptop can support 2x external monitors?

Context: I’m shopping for a laptop, which would support my 2 main modes of operation.

1. In desk mode, I do many hours of design work with OrCAD, Altium, SolidWorks, Visio; also write code in Visual Studio and Eclipse. For that, I’d like to have 2x large external monitors. If needed, monitors can be connected through dock station. If it's possible to choose between portrait and landscape orientation of monitors, that would be a bonus.

2. In field mode, I still need to run CAD packages, but only to look-up and tweak things occasionally. Field mode happens in vanilla indoor environments, so ruggedness and ingress protection are not needed. It would be nice if the laptop had a small footprint, like a 13” laptop perhaps. At the same time, weight and thickness of the laptop are not a problem for me.

Of course, I also wonder if this is realistic at all.
Update: I'm checking looking into Maxtor DualHead2Go, which was suggested in several other threads.

Update: Found something curious. The hp 120W Advanced Docking Station has 2x DisplayPorts (source).

Item 11 on the drawing. Sounds like there ought to be an hp laptop, which would do 2x external monies. Could these DisplayPorts be daisy chained inside docking station?

Update: Lenovo Mini Dock Plus also has 2x DisplayPort

Lenovo had also put together a brief on multiple monitor setups (PDF version).

Any suggestion, insight or reference is really appreciated!

Dell Laptop - 100% CPU usage when using Docking station

Update 2: On further investigation, I have reproduced the issue on my windows side. I put the laptop on the dock while in sleep mode and woke it to find it climbing to 100% cpu usage. removing from the dock lets the cpu go down to ~5%. Replacing it on the dock causes 100% usage again. Note: The System Idle process uses relatively little cpu during this time.

Update: I just tried replicating this issue again on my windows side, and doesn't seem to be happening anymore. However, when im running ubuntu it becomes extremely slow. So this could actually be a driver issue with my ubuntu side.

The Problem:

I'm using a Dell e5430 laptop (provided by my employer) and have a docking station for it. When I use the docking station my cpu usage goes up to 100% and stays there.

What I've looked at:

-Task Manager: This cannot be traced to any particular process or service.

-Windows drivers: This also occurs when I boot into my ubuntu partition, so its a firmware/bios problem not related to a particular OS.

-Updates from dell: I checked their drivers page and did not see any updates relevant to my problem.

Other notes:

-This occurs whether or not I have any peripherals plugged in. I have tried plugging in and unplugging various things and it stays at 100% cpu usage even without anything other than the power cable.

What's the performance on USB docking stations, and can they be used when laptop is closed?

I'm looking into a docking station for a Dell Studio laptop. I don't see the traditional docking stations I'm familiar with - the kind (for a Dell Latitude, for example) where you sit the laptop on top of a long row of pins. Instead, I'm seeing a lot of USB docking stations.

1. When I close my laptop, I want it to go into sleep mode (not turn off - just go to sleep). If I then connect a USB docking station to the laptop while it's closed, will it wake up?
2. What's the performance on USB 2.0 docking stations with a new Dell Studio? Can all of the video and internet traffic really go through a USB 2.0 connection while still providing the best video frame rates and internet speeds?
3. When you undock, I assume you'd have to use the "Safely Remove Hardware" feature in Windows. Will that successfully 'remove' everything attached to the docking station - external drives, thumb drives, etc?

HDD is not accessible. Possible MFT corruption. How do i proceed?

I use a WD 1TB Sata2 HDD, on a USB docking base.

I started copying large files to this external Storage and went out.
When i got back home, there was a strange System tray message which i closed as i thought was nothing. The only words i vaguely remember are "optimized" and "performance"

Then i sadly discovered that the Disk is not accessible and Windows is prompting me to do a Format!

The System Event Viewer shows many occurrences of the following:

Source: Ntfs
The file system structure on the disk is corrupt and unusable.
Please run the chkdsk utility on the volume F:.

Source: Application Popup(but i see no popups)
Application popup: Windows - 
Corrupt File : Exception Processing Message 0xc0000102 
Parameters 0x000007FEFCF1715C 0x000007FEFCF1715C 
0x000007FEFCF1715C 0x000007FEFCF1715C

Source: Disk
The device, \Device\Harddisk1\DR2, has a bad block.

After a couple of restarts still the same. Then i tried to follow the chkdsk advice:

C:\Windows\system32>chkdsk F: /F
The type of the file system is NTFS.
Volume label is 1T.
Corrupt master file table. Windows will attempt to recover
master file table from disk.
Windows cannot recover master file table.  CHKDSK aborted.

The MFT is considered corrupt and could not be recovered by chkdsk.

Then i booted from Linux and got the same.
I couldn't mount the Disk because of MFT being corrupt.

The Data on disk are valuable to me. What do you propose instead of formatting?
Thanks in advance :-)

EDIT:
I ran the TestDisk but both MFT(MFT main & MFT mirror) were corrupt, so reconstruction is not possible. I googled some more, and right now i am into Data Recovery with Zero Assumtion Recovery, as suggested by TestDisk.

How do I prevent my laptop from shutting down when undocking?

The Laptop is an HP EliteBook 8540p running Windows 7 Professional. OS updates are applied regularly via Windows Update and the machine is currently fully up to date.

Recently, when undocking the laptop it has started initiating the shutdown sequence. The "waiting on applications to close" box pops up so it can be aborted if caught quickly enough.

I can't find anything in the power configuration related to docking/undocking and google hasn't proven very useful either. Has anyone ran into this problem and figured out how to resolve it?

How to detect and run custom scripts on docking / un-docking of ThinkPad?

I'd like to run custom scripts on docking or un-docking my ThinkPad X220.

Obvious place is some udev rule, but what events or attributes should I use? Another option is acpi. Is it better option? What else comes as viable alternative? I am running Debian, a mix between squeeze, backports, wheeze... and sid. Is there any native solution?