WinXP PC can't write on exFat external HDD - Huh Why?

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IGemini

Platinum Member
Nov 5, 2010
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Actual support for exFAT starts at XP SP2. But yes, the driver is still needed.
 

PickPay

Junior Member
Jul 20, 2012
2
0
0
Hello I wanted to share my experience maybe it will help and also some might have answers because I'm encountering a somewhat similar problem.

The setup is a bit different (Win7 instead of XP) so let me know if it's worth making a new post and if it belongs elsewhere.

I have an iMac 27" with Lion and Windows 7 (BootCamp).
I formated a USB 2TB HD to exFAT for compatibility with both systems.

When I boot under Mac and write data to my external drive it becomes unusable under Win7 (error 0x80071AC3 - disk damaged). I found a command : chkdsk :x /F (where x is the letter of my drive) which will temporarily fix it until I write data under Mac again...

As far as I remember I used iPartition to set the partition table to GUID then Win7 to format to exFAT (activated 1 primary partition with the disk management tool)
 

Tyranicus

Senior member
Aug 28, 2007
914
6
81
Hello I wanted to share my experience maybe it will help and also some might have answers because I'm encountering a somewhat similar problem.

The setup is a bit different (Win7 instead of XP) so let me know if it's worth making a new post and if it belongs elsewhere.

I have an iMac 27" with Lion and Windows 7 (BootCamp).
I formated a USB 2TB HD to exFAT for compatibility with both systems.

When I boot under Mac and write data to my external drive it becomes unusable under Win7 (error 0x80071AC3 - disk damaged). I found a command : chkdsk :x /F (where x is the letter of my drive) which will temporarily fix it until I write data under Mac again...

As far as I remember I used iPartition to set the partition table to GUID then Win7 to format to exFAT (activated 1 primary partition with the disk management tool)
The only thing I can think of is the GUID partition table. You may want to use MBR. I have a drive in my hackintosh that is formatted MBR and exFAT which I write to from both OS X and Windows with no issues. I did format it from Disk Utility in OS X, but I don't believe that should matter.
 

TheStu

Moderator<br>Mobile Devices & Gadgets
Moderator
Sep 15, 2004
12,089
45
91
The only thing I can think of is the GUID partition table. You may want to use MBR. I have a drive in my hackintosh that is formatted MBR and exFAT which I write to from both OS X and Windows with no issues. I did format it from Disk Utility in OS X, but I don't believe that should matter.

Unless I am mistaken, Windows will not format internal drives as exFAT
 

PickPay

Junior Member
Jul 20, 2012
2
0
0
That seems to have been the problem. I formated the drive again under Mac with Disk Utility (couldn't find a way to change partition table under Win7 disk management) which changed the partition table to MBR. But I read somewhere that GPT should work fine with Win7 and Mac Lion ... Also luckily my HD is just 2Tb otherwise I would be in trouble as MBR is limited to 2Tb right ?

Thank you for your help Tyranicus ;)
 
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cheez

Golden Member
Nov 19, 2010
1,722
69
91
^ Windows 7 maybe easier to deal with, but man, WinXP and Mac OS X just don't go together no matter what I tried..... I gave up on external hard drive to work on Mac and WinXP...... it's not worth the trouble. Don't waste your time. Also pain in the butt getting Server 2003 to work with it. This is why I use file transfer over the network O-N-L-Y........ 1Gbps is plenty fast. Easiest and painless.