What fie systems can XP W7 recognize?

[BarkingGhostar]

I have a pair of 3TH MyBook Essential external USB3 drives. I unpacked them and connected them to a PC with W7 on them. They supposedly left the factory with NFTS as the filesystem (they were formatted and ready to use).

I copied some very large and very small files onto both of them (VOB for large, and RAW images for small) to make sure the capacity was what it was supposed to be--no problems there. I can read the copied data just fine.

I then unmounted them both and connected them to an XP Pro machine with USB only. The first drive (let's call it A) gave me no trouble at all. The second drive (let's call it B) prevented the XP Pro computer from even POST'ing.

I bought a USB3 controller card and connected both drives and the XP Pro PC boots just fine, and drive A is readable and can be written to. Drive B, however, isn't recognized at all, not seen in the Device Manager, Disk Management, and certainly not in My Computer.

I have another PC configured with XP Pro using the exact same motherboard. I took drive B down to it. That computer was already on and when I connected drive B to it the OS detected it, identified it for what it was, prompted me to go look for the drivers on the Internet (approved) and installed the driver successfully--I was even told the drive was ready for use.

Still, this second XP Pro computer had no drive B showing up in My Computer and Disk Management, but in Device Manager it was there under Disk Drives. I opened its entry in Device Manager, clicked the Volume tab and then the Populate' button and said it was Unknown, Not Recognized. Surprise!

So, now I am wondering what condition would allow this drive B to be recognized and accessible in W7, and only detected in Device Manager in XP Pro. Again, they supposedly left the factor with NTFS for the filesystem, but I am wondering if something else got changed, like maybe the MBR.

Ideas/suggestions on what to try?

 

[Nothinman]

Look in disk manager in Win7 and it should tell you what kind of partition tables and filesystems were used. Did the event logs show anything useful?

If the second drive isn't showing up, makes a PC not post, etc then it seems like a hardware problem with either the drive or the enclosure.

XP and Win7 both really only support FAT and NTFS, that hasn't changed.

 

[hhhd1]

Could be a hardware problem, if the "older" computer that has windows xp is not supplying enough power to run the drive.

Edit:

I just realized that those could be having external power supply, so nevermind my comment.

Still could be a hardware issue, maybe faulty/old/dusty usb jacks.

 

[ViRGE]

If they're 3TB drives, neither of them should be working on WinXP. XP does not support GPT partitions, which is what would be required for a 3TB drive as MBR does not support disks over 2.2TB.

 

[BarkingGhostar]

Guys, these are Western Digital external drives with their own power supply, and the documentation says that they are XP compatible. Also, one of the drives (drive A) works perfectly in XP.

Nothinman, I'll check and see what W7 reports.

 

[ViRGE]

Guys, these are Western Digital external drives with their own power supply, and the documentation says that they are XP compatible. Also, one of the drives (drive A) works perfectly in XP.

Nothinman, I'll check and see what W7 reports.

I get that they're external drives, but that doesn't change the fact that this doesn't make any sense. Internal or external, it would still need to be partitioned GPT to have a 3TB partition. Quite frankly, this shouldn't have worked at all.😛

 

[Nothinman]

Guys, these are Western Digital external drives with their own power supply, and the documentation says that they are XP compatible. Also, one of the drives (drive A) works perfectly in XP.

Nothinman, I'll check and see what W7 reports.

And since you can't use a BIOS partition table to address >2TB and XP doesn't support GPT that means there's some black magic software in there to make it work with XP which could have any kind of weird side effects.

Personally, I would have repartitioned them with GPT and wouldn't have tried to attach them to a ancient OS like that via anything except a network share.

 

[BarkingGhostar]

Ok, so looking at this trouble drive in W7 it indeed is setup for GPT and not MBR. While the drive working in XP is setup for MBR.

Yes, I agree, there is some magic going on in the Western Digital enclosure, which has to since its taking a SATA device and making it a USB device. It has its own controller.

I know that WDC packages this product in retail for both Windows and for OSX and it is likely a GPT HDD was grabbed and placed in a package meant for Windows.

Now I have to figure out if the partition table 'type' can be changed non-destructively, or if I need to move the data off and start fresh.

 

[Nothinman]

How big is the volume on the one setup with MBR?

 

[imagoon]

I have seen some of the external enclosures doing some "magic" to make externals work on XP. When you plug them in typically a small 8MB "virtual CD" appears and autoinstalls a driver for it that mounts the 3TB disk.

 

[ViRGE]

Ok, so looking at this trouble drive in W7 it indeed is setup for GPT and not MBR. While the drive working in XP is setup for MBR.

Yes, I agree, there is some magic going on in the Western Digital enclosure, which has to since its taking a SATA device and making it a USB device. It has its own controller.

I know that WDC packages this product in retail for both Windows and for OSX and it is likely a GPT HDD was grabbed and placed in a package meant for Windows.

Now I have to figure out if the partition table 'type' can be changed non-destructively, or if I need to move the data off and start fresh.

You won't be able to change the partition type non-destructively.🙁 Changing partitions like that is always destructive.