HP Colour LaserJet Printer Hard Drive

Question

We are struggling to print Student's Theses on our HP CLJ CP4025 Printers (It will only let us print 1 at a time & typically they need multiple copies). Supposedly the solution is to install the optional Hard Drive.

My question is:

a) Does a hard drive on the printer make a significant difference?

b) Can we use any old hard drive or do we have to use the rather pricey HP High performance EIO units?

--Edit--

Bit more info - Mac OS X with the latest HP drivers, printing to a CUPS server using a RAW socket. We don't have this issue printing using this setup to our Lanier beasts.

Also printing smaller jobs we can print multiple copies, it's just the huge, jobs where we get the problems

I did wonder if this was a Super User question, but I figure it's more suited to SF. — Jon Rhoades, Apr 22 '10 at 06:24
It's kinda SuperUser-y, but dealing with printer performance when loaded with multiple jobs is more ServerFault-ish, I'd say. — Ward - Reinstate Monica, Apr 22 '10 at 06:41

score 2 · Answer 1 · answered Apr 22 '10 at 06:48

Letting you print only one at a time might be more of a driver issue. Are the printers networked, or hooked up to one PC?

In any case, typically the hard drive will be used by the printer for spooling jobs internally, so that whatever is sending the print jobs, be it server or standalone PC, isn't queuing them up. In your case, if it's the printer that's limiting you to one copy at a time, then adding the hard drive should help.

I would guess you're stuck with HP's expensive unit because there's no other way to get the enclosure/carrier. And since they emphasize the "encrypted" part of the description, I'd bet the electronics for the encryption are in the carrier, so you couldn't just run a SATA cable out the back of the printer, plug in any old drive and duct tape it to the printer.

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Apr 22 '10 at 07:30

As Ward states you have a problem here that can be fixed by understanding more about your 'print server' (we could do with knowing more about this from you please) as it should be very easy to setup to accept hundreds of print jobs simultaneously for the printer to churn out in order - that's all the the disk will do but it should be free to setup (for the price of that hard disk you could buy at least one good new printer!). That said if you really want to buy a disk you do indeed absolutely have to buy their specific disk sorry.

HP Colour LaserJet Printer Hard Drive

2 Answers2