External DVD drive via USB to SATA adapter

Hello everyone! How's the net"booking"? :lol: at any rate here's my dilemma. I recently purchased a LG super multi drive (internal)(link will open in same window) for my Aspire one ZG5 running XP(AOA 150-1777) hoping to use that to backup info from my book. I used a USB to SATA adapter to "mount" the optical, when i plugged in. the "book" recognized my disk drive as an unmapped(meaning there was no letter map for the drive) USB mass storage device. thinking that maybe it's the usb port, i tried another port on the book, at which point; i noticed that the puter did see what kind of drive it is, (down to model) but then after "plug and play" it said that it couldn't install it properly, and in turn, it wouldn't function properly. after looking in the device manager. i read that the netbook won't read the drive because there's no proper driver software for it to run with. I go onto LG's product support and find a firmware updater hoping that'll help. unfortunately i can't install an update firmware, because the ".exe" looks for a mapped drive in which to update the firmware to. I also looked around the web to find some driver updater prog's to help me out with this. to my dismay i regret to admit that i simply can't fork over the amount of money that most of these apps/companies want for me to have a registered version of their software that may not help my situation.
Any help about this topic would be greatly appreciated. I mean anything. if any of the driver update programs are worth the money to fix my problem or maybe another resource/solution in order to not buy a application i may not use but this one time. seeing as i bought the disk from a well known north american retailer that resells OEM,used,refurbished pc supplies. i bought mine that way used( i think it's an OEM off-lease or whatever, not honestly sure) I am sure that my optical drive came with no software whatsoever. So as of right now I'm at a loss about what to do from here any help is appreciate and thank you for at least looking! take care, and have a good one! Also if you need more info. please attempt to message me, although i will be on here checking to see if anyone has come up with anything. again, thank you.

 

I presume you want the drive to backup and add files to the netbook. Here is a quick way to do this. Download a bootable Linux CD - I use puppy. Plug in your drive, power on and put the disk in the drive. Now reboot and promote the usb DVD from 6 to 1 in the BIOS on the way.

It will then boot Puppy Linux into a ram disk - but takes some time to do so. You can then take the Cd out of the drive.

This will establish that the DVD physically works with the netbook, and also give you a clean desktop to do your file management and other functions. You can even play videos using the drive.

As Puppy is in a ram disk it will have no effect on the machine and you can safely do this until Microsoft or LG come up with a device driver.... if they ever do.

 

hey i really appreciate your response it's very informative, and i'm concerned about how to get the linux cd to disk. seeing as i don't have a working read/write drive at the moment is it possible to use this procedure on a usb? i apologize for being newbish. i'm just one of the puter users who waits untill he has a problem with something instead of doing preventive or proactive maintenance. that and i am not very computer knowledgeable either. i am familiar with linux and wouldn't mind a dual boot system on this book, but alas, one thing at a time. instead of following your guidance i went with purchasing an enclosure hoping that'll solve my dilemma. again thank you for your time and help. *update* i purchased the enclosure and a usb bus powered disk drive and had the same problems i am being to believe that i need to update my drivers via driver robot or some prog like that. any suggestions?
also i'm going to try to the method you've suggested with a usb flash if it's possible. ty
btw: it's now open season to flame me for not following Jimux's advice and again thank you!

 

Yes, you can install puppy to a USB drive or SD card, as you can with several other distros. There is a particular distro, moblin, which is specific to intel Atom netbooks, but I have not tried it so cannot recommend it yet.

Once you get Puppy running you will have a number of admin tools to examine your hardware, including Gparted to inspect storage devices. this will confirm that the external drive is correctly functioning - ie no cable faults.

If you want a really fast distro then consider DSL (Darn Small Linux). It can be installed to usb and SD and is different in that it is written in assembler rather than compiled C. making it very small and efficient. It runs in a ram disk and is blindingly fast.

 

Very cool! i will look into DSL i've just downloaded the UNR, ubuntu netbook remix and i'm going to work from there. One thing still eludes me though if i'm running a linux OS from a flash media, or not a partition from the hdd on my netbook, can i still access the files on my netbook? with linux running and my files being on the hardddrive?

 

Yes, all drives and partitions will be available. You can even use Gparted to resize hard disk drives without compromising their content. For example reduce the size of the windows partition, add a new partition in the released space and install Linux in that partition. Just don't reformat an existing partition unless you want to loose the content.

When you examine your hard disk under Gparted you will probably find a first small partition and a second partition filling the rest of the disk. The small partition is a typical Microsoft boot partition with essentional operating system software. You may also find a swap partition of say 1Gb.

A word of warning, DSL is great as a second OS or on a machine with limited resources (I've run it on an old Thinkpad with 16Mb Ram and a 200Mb hard disk) but is not a full distro with the bells and whistles of something like Puppy or SuSE.

 

awesome! one final question just to clear up things for myself DSL and UNR are two different os's correct? :?:

 

Yes, UNR is Ubuntu Notebook Remix distro. I've never used it myself as I am a SuSE fan - it's supported by Novell and has versions for professional corporate users - but I know several IT specialists who enthuse about it. It would be a much broader distro that DSL.
Incidentally your terminology is not quite correct. The OS is Linux, each distribution (distro) is a package consisting of the Linux kernel, desktop and suite of applications.

 

understood. thanks for clearing all of that up for me. and i understand what you mean by linux=OS and UNR=distro
it's like windows=OS and 7,xp,'95=distro correct? either way. don't want to go off topic to much just looking to get my facts straight. i really appreciate your help here. it sorted out a lot! i have the bootable thumb drive. haven't tested it running yet. haven't use my netbook in recently. but it was an foolproof setup that made me feel accomplished as making my first self-booting VCD! :lol: again thanks for your incite really made the process very, very easy. and less worrisome.

 

You cannot draw parallels between Linux and Windows as the architecture is conceptually different. Linux is an Operating System (like DOS or Unix) and you then add a desktop (GUI layer) of your choice. Common ones are KDE, Gnome, XFCE but there are many more.
With Windows the desktop is heavily integrated into the OS so you have no choice and the OS varies from one windows product to another. So some applications which run on one version will not run on newer Windows versions and applications often need extensions to the operating system (drivers, dlls) in order to run.
Additionally, for the more technical, Linux applications are available as source code so you can modify applications to do what you want, and compile it on any machine capable of running Linux. The reason so many low spec netbooks run Linux is that it can perform well with limited resources that would leave Windows struggling to even get out of bed.
As you may guess I am not a fan of Microsoft products, until 15 years ago I made a good living in IT supporting companies with Microsoft products - there was always plenty of work, but in a Linux environment one person can support a much larger number of users as there are less issues. Since retiring 10 years ago I have not touched Microsoft, except when friends have problems.