Thank you randy_ca. I think I may end up doing what you and ravencajun do....just turning it off and disconnecting it for bootups and shutdowns. Two questions: 1)When I tried randy_ca's instructions to enter the BIOS, on the blue HP screen, nothing happens when I press F1 for Setup. Is there another way to get to BIOS? Or will I be better off just turning it off and unplugging it before booting? 2) Ravencajun - Oops, I was "practicing" the remove safely and messed up. I right clicked on the tray icon and chose "exit" thinking it would turn off the HD so I could use the remove safely and the icon disappeared. Can I get it back? Yes, I think I'll be happy with the addition of the external HD. My photos and docs feel so....so.....secure. :) Thank you both for teaching. Pam

Owbist, thanks I do like the fast boot on W8 - even with the switch to Desk Top, which to my simple needs is like being back in W7, it is a much shorter wait to start browsing or getting email. Mikie, not sure I "know and love" playing with the BIOS, but in the past I have had occasions to need to. Mostly that goes back to W95 days. Or even the 3.x whatever was before '95. You seem to be suggesting a 3rd party recovery tool. As I noted Gateway provides a tool to image the HDD as well as restore to factory fresh - as I have already uninstalled Norton I assume that would be Factory Fresh less Norton which is fine with me. What I miss was W7 had a DVD boot capability and Toshiba provided me with the tools to create a repair DVD, separate from a restore DVD... I liked that, it prevented me form doing damage by clicking on the wrong button. I suppose the Gateway restore doesn't proved direct access to F8. I do recall tapping F8 during a boot in XP and earlier to get into the BIOS..you seem to be saying (to my reading) that W8 doesn't let one get to the BIOS until the password is satisfied. I don't know if that is different in W7, I have never gone to the BIOS in my W7 machines. I have had to boot the Toshiba notebook off of the Repair DVD a couple of times and it saved my "bacon". On Password, in W7 I could easily change or remove the password.. that seems to be buried deeper in W8. Is it even possible to run W8 without an administrative password protected logon? My giant 17.3" Gateway will likely not be taken out of the house, a password isn't needed - well if a crook breaks into my house it would be better if I has some protection on all computers... problem is W8 ended up with a very complicated password that resulted from my initial start up of the machine..as I recall it had something to do with a password for my Microsoft account, and being external I wanted a secure PW, in fact MS may have required it.

I am going out of what's left of my mind... Rechecked the connections all is OK on that front. Tried to install drivers from miniCD that came with enclosure, but they were for Windows 98 only. Light does come on for enclosure when powered up. My computer sees a USB mass storage unit attached as it tells me this device would run better with a USB 2.00 port.(I have l.0, I guess) Device Mgr.says this device is there and working properly but it will not show up on "My Computer" to be accessed. I even went into DOS prompt and at random typed in various drive letters and after G:(CDRW) nothing clicked in..and I got up to the letter R:!! Just got bright idea...I am going to Nexstar website for clues...thanks for your input...keep it coming...bye for now.

Bus Driver: Several mornings, when I turned on my computer, I got the message that the Maxtor "wasn't there" or something like that. However, I found that if I clicked on the Remove Hardware Safely icon in the System Tray and then unplugged both USB and electric cables and plugged them in again after a minute (even a short time seems to reset it), then I "get it back". For the last three days, I haven't had to do that; it hasn't given me any trouble on start-up, and the mouse has not frozen when I checked the things inside the drive, so I am OK with the way it is now. After all, it only cost $99.99 for 500GB. I wouldn't give it away, although I admit that the next external drive I buy will probably NOT be a Maxtor! Maybe there is hope for your drive, too. You can always turn it off by clicking on the Sys. Tray icon and choosing Exit, but if you are only concerned about saving energy, you can do what CBoy does. I have mine set to turn off if it isn't used for 10 minutes.