External Hard Drive Working Alone

No. It only stores data. As far as I know, it needs a brain to process the data.

and electricity to run....They do make autonomous hard drives for photography, to copy data from cards....

http://www.engadget.com/2007/01/26/askas-20gb-tripper-light-autonomous-hdd-for-photographers/

It should be possible. How to make an OS - Windows XP - run an application on a stand alone HD? (supplied with electrical power, of course)

From your OP:

"...and then disconnecting it (external hard drive) from the PC?" What will this application do if disconnected from the PC? How does the drive run at all if disconnected?

Next question,...actually two questions, no three. and a fourth and a fifth.

How do I hook up my Keyboard, Mouse and Monitor to my hard drive?

Now I would like to hook up my processor to the hard drive. How can I do that?

And then hook it up the the dishwasher?

Install it in a PC!

You have to buy a new dishwasher with a usb port, they seem to put usb ports in everything else!.

I think he wants it to store and excecute source code uploaded from a PC.

He can easily achive this by adding a CPU, some RAM, peripheral ports, a graphics controller, a power supply and lithium batteries to the drive, and then simply write an application for Windows; no big deal...

Oh, wait ! that's not an external hard drive working alone !

It just doesn't work that way. A hard disk is a passive storage device.

An O.S. will not run on a stand alone hard drive with out a processor, ram, among other things.

Clear..... thank you very much !

Run the program on a piece of fruit?

Much smaller than a PC

Thank you for the link however it seems it will not work for me as I wanted it for a different task - I needed it to log such data as temperatures, pressures, el. current (not music listening)

Check out the forum for example uses in projects.

The hard drive does not "(process data)", it only stores it.

The PC (which stands for Personal *Computer*) is what "processes" data.

Us old guys remember computing was once known as "Data Processing"

(The impish embedded firmware engineer in me has to play the Devil's Advocate and say that in fact, the hard drive does have a processor in it - virtually everything that communicates electronically does - and if you could reprogram the hard drive firmware, you could conceivably make it able to do "offline" processing given only the power supply hookup. IF... the firmware was reprogrammable, and there was enough code memory for your processing functions alongside the hard-drive-y things it is already doing.)

Yeah, remember when hard drive controllers were actually separte devices that took up 20u of rack space? You could run diagnostics on the drives from the controller itself from the front panel...ah, yes...typing in hexadecimal machine code from a buttonpad just to make the drive write all ones, zeros or gasp! alternating ones and zeros!

I have an old CDC 9766 in my office...300MB...and about 300 pounds of rolling behemoth.

Thank you very much for your answers guys! So, it seems I was looking for a cheaper, ready made alternative to a PC with my limited knowledge. But considering the latter a second hand notebook it seems would be my best choice.

Hello Friends,

Certain models of LCD and other PC sets allow you to connect external hard drives directly to the unit in order to play computer video and audio files. Once connected, the content contained on the hard drive is accessible via the PC main-menu system. In order for this to work, you need a USB hard drive that connects to devices using a USB cable and a PC that supports both USB as well as the connecting of external hard drives.
Instructions
1.Locate the USB input on your PC. This looks identical to the USB inputs on your computer, which are the inputs typically used to connect your external hard drive to that particular machine.
2.Plug the external hard drive's USB cable into the USB input on your PC.
3.Plug the opposite side of the USB cable into the external hard drive's USB input.
4.Turn on your external hard drive or plug it into a wall outlet (if applicable). Your PC won't be able to recognize the drive if it isn't turned on. Once on, your external hard drive is properly connected to your PC.

Thanks And Regards
Steven Arnold