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External USB Hard Drive Works in WinXP. Not recognized in Windows 8

S

sohcrates

Diamond Member
I have an external hard drive (USB) that worked in Windows XP.

Now I upgraded to Windows 8 and when i plug it in it shows up in Disk Management but with no drive letter. It is setup as a dynamic drive.

When i right click to "activate" disk it gives me an error.

The only other option i see is to right click and convert to basic disk but i know that would reformat the drive which i do not want to do.

Any thoughts?
 
Does Disk Management give you the 'change drive letter and paths' option for this drive? I would see if you can just assign it a letter. I don't think you would have to necessarily mark it as active.
 
mfenn said:
Also, is the disk Basic or Dynamic? I've read some reports of dynamic disks that were created with earlier versions of Windows not working properly with Windows 8.
Click to expand...

Mfenn, I thought I had read that this applies to any OS, as in they would only work with the same OS they were created on. Does swapping work with the earlier OSs?
 
ketchup79 said:
Mfenn, I thought I had read that this applies to any OS, as in they would only work with the same OS they were created on. Does swapping work with the earlier OSs?
Click to expand...

I've moved dynamic disks between Vista and 7 no problem, can't say about other versions. I agree that XP to 8 is quite a jump.
 
Copy everything to another computer, format the usb in the windows 8 computer, and copy all the files back to the usb.
 
If connected to a USB 3.0 port, try switching to a USB 2.0 port.
The Windows 8 USB 3.0 port driver seems to have problems when using certain brands of USB devices, such as thumb drives. May affect other devices such as your external USB HD housing.

Example: my dual-boot (Gigabyte Z77-UD5H) Windows 8 64-bit/Windows XP 32-bit system's USB 3.0 port can read a Team 16Gb USB 3.0 thumb drive correctly in XP, but in Windows 8 cannot read the drive at all. Switch to a USB 2.0 port, and the Team 16Gb again functions normally. A different brand of USB 3.0 thumb drive (Mushkin 32Gb) reads from the same USB 3.0 port correctly in either O.S.
 
Last edited:
it is a dynamic drive formatted from XP. that is probably the cause of non-recognition by Win8. Was just hoping there was an easier way. I think I will end up copying and reformatting in Win8.

I'll add this to the list of things I hate about Win8 (so far that includes everything)

Thanks
 
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