I’m wondering if WinXP SP 2 can automatically read magnetic discs that were written by Win7 64 bit. My dad’s trying to do this, and it’s just not showing the drive on the computer. I think MS is using a different file system in Win7. I don’t know if the 64 bit part is a problem. I know that “no one is on SP 2 anymore”, but this is the computer of my 74 year-old aunt who’s still on dialup. If needed, I guess they could get someone to go on broadband and install SP3.
The error message he says he keeps getting in Device Manager is that the disc is stopped, even though he’s plugged the external drive into a different USB port.
No they are both NTFS maybe the drive on Windows 7 is to big to be seen with Windows XP i forgot where the cut off is. The 64 bit won’t make a difference all that means is your CPU can work with 64bit chunks of data rather than 32 which is nice for video and graphic editing but for simple things it actually takes longer. Anyways is windows deteccting it when it is pluggged in? what I would do is burn a Ubuntu Live CD and just boot that up and try to plug it in there you can move files.
It could be a driver issues to the the harddrive have two USB ends or just one?
We don’t know the file system on the external drive because they can’t see it on the computer. The C drive is FAT32.
I don’t know what a dynamic disc is.
The drive is only a terabyte. I’m pretty sure that XP can use that.
“It could be a driver issues to the the harddrive have two USB ends or just one?” I’m not able to find and fix the exact typo in that. The drive is USB powered only, with no 110V transformer plug.
Device Manager seems to know the disc is there, because it has a USB Mass Storage entry, but keeps saying the device is stopped. Obviously the drive has worked before, because it was written to, on the Win7-64 computer.
On the Win 86 system - Go to windows explorer > right click on “my computer”> left click on “storage” > left click on “disk management”
What does the list say for the file system being used by the disks the system sees.
For the Win 7 NTFS disk that the you say the Win 86 manager applet “sees”, but the system can’t access have you assigned a drive letter to it? Right click on the visible, but inaccessible drive to do this.
Do this also
On the Win 86 system - Go to windows explorer > right click on “my computer”> right click on “manage” > left click on “storage” > left click on “disk management”
From a very computer nerdy former HS student of mine, now at Embry-Riddle U for engineering:
7 uses and updated version of NTFS that is unreadable by XP SP2. No, 64 bit is not a problem.
Make sure to update XP to SP3, and get it up to date. That should solve it. If nothing else, you can re-format the drive in XP, in which case, 7 will still be able to read it.
This may seem obvious, but I do want to point out that formatting is a destructive option, and will cause you to lose the files. It’s not that big a deal if the files have been backed up and you can get them again, or you don’t need them, but, otherwise, I wouldn’t do that.
After the SP3 update you can non-destructively (ie no format needed) convert FAT32 to NTFS, but it is one way only, and needless to say you should back up everything before doing this.
I’ll also throw out there that I ran into an issue where an XP machine simply wouldn’t recognize an external USB drive that I knew was working. I ended up fixing that by installing the Chipset drivers from the motherboard manufacturer. Apparently the native drivers included with Windows weren’t up to snuff.
Yes, but that’s a specialized process. The advice given to the OP specifically says to do it “if nothing else.” That would imply that XP SP3 still can’t read the disk. As far as I know, the converter will not work in that scenario.
If Windows 7 provides a way of converting FAT to NTFS, that might work.
Still, I would call either a conversion, not a reformat. It sounds more like the OP’s advisor is recommending wiping the disk.
It sounds like installing SP3 and converting the FAT32 file system to NTFS should solve the problem. You may also want to update the PC BIOS to the latest version before doing this and (per Macnbaish) check that the lastest USB chipset drivers are installed.
only upgrade your PC BIOS if you fit the exact criteria for the PC BIOS upgrade. using the wrong upgrade, or having the process fail can turn your mother board into junk. BIOS upgrades are made for very specific purposes and are not a casual cure-all.
operating system service packs and drivers are good to have the latest that will work with your system. those will cure lots of problems.