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Can't connect two external hard drives

A

Alone

Diamond Member
Today I bought two Seagate external hard drives. One is a 500GB (drive 1) drive, the other is a 1TB drive (drive 2).

I hooked drive 1 up to an older computer because it only had a 20GB internal drive. I copied everything over, and pointed My Documents and a few other locations to it, so it would act as an internal drive (this is on my parents computer, I'm trying to make it as simple as possible). The drive is labeled F:/

I then took drive 2 and hooked it up to my computer. I transferred over my digital copies of movies I own as well as some music and pictures. I plugged that drive into my parents computer as well. So far, there hadn't been an issue. The problem only occurs when I try to copy the data off of drive 2 onto drive 1. The files won't transfer, it says there's an error reading files, even if I try to transfer vice-versa. The transfer dialog hangs and explorer freezes up. The torrents that I have downloading to drive 1 then stop saying they can't find the specified file.

My Computer still lists both drives as being active, and I can still access files from each (I can watch movies on drive 2). I just can't transfer from one to the other.

Looking at the drive properties, it lists both as using Location 0. Is the problem simply that they're both fighting over the same location? Is my computer not able to identify them as two uniquely different drives? How can I correct this?

If you require more detailed information about the drives or the computer, just ask. The computer in question is running Windows XP SP2.

I appreciate any help.

Drive Manager.

Shows drive F: at the top being 500GB, which is right. But at the bottom it shows it as being 1TB, as if it were the other drive. Why?
 
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Now I can copy files from the 500GB to the 1TB. But I can't copy back. I tried copying an executable, and the transfer looks successful, but if I try to open it, it fails.
 
Yes I do. They're both connected the same way, and I've even tried switching ports various times, with no luck.
 
You say these drives are hooked up to an older computer. Is this computer using a FAT32 file system and how large are the files you are attempting to transfer?
 
It's not terribly old.

It uses an NTFS filesystem, and I've tried copying files as small as 240kb to as large as 107GB. No joy on either occasion.
 
Have you tried shutting down the PC then restarting it? This will allow the bios to reload the USB controller and windows to reenumerate all devices. This might help is you have not done so. You made mention that both drives are showing as being in location 0 and I believe that is your issue.
 
Are you getting the mis-matched Disk Management information about the 500 GB disk on just one computer, or on both computers? If you plug only the 500 GB disk into the two computers, does it show the wrong information on one, both, or neither computer?
 
Yup. I've shut down and restarted on multiple occasions with no results. Did multiple check disks and defrags for the hell of it. No joy. I also formatted one of the drives (which had my movies, since I have copies) and that didn't help. Now I'm thinking of formatting the 500GB drive, once I find a place to back up the data.

As far as plugging the drive into another computer to see if it reads properly, that seems like a reasonable idea and I feel like an idiot for not trying it. I've got a laptop around here somewhere, which should give the information we need. I also have a UNIX based machine, which might read the drive differently.
 
This may seem like a silly question - but, are the external drives self-powered, i.e., do they have a power source other than your USB ports?
 
I'm taking a shot in the dark here but I notice that both volumes have the same name. Can you run 2 ntfs volumes of the same name but created on different computers on one computer without changing the name on one of them? I never run 2 volumes with the same name together on the same computer. Don't know that this is your problem but just looking at what is going on it seems windows is getting confused about which drive is which. Rename one of the volumes and see what happens.
 
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