Getting a toshiba to work on xp

[Methen]

I need a little pre buy assistance, I am wanting to purchase one of those TOSHIBA 3TB Canvio Connect II Portable Hard Drives, But according to the system requirements it does not support xp due it be pre formatted to work on windows 8.1 or higher, I called their support line and they said it would not work and that it could not be reformatted to work on xp, But the woman I was talking to did not seem to know much, is there a way I would be able to get one of these to work on xp ?

 

[Dark Lord of Tech]

She is correct.

Formatted NTFS for Microsoft Windows 10, 8.1, 8, 7.

 

[Methen]

Ok, But is there a way to reformat it to work on xp?

also a friend of mine has a 1 tb one and according to the system requirements for that one it should not work on xp ether but it does...

 

[ex_bubblehead]

Contact Toshiba and ask if the drive is native 4096 byte sectors or a 512E drive. If it's native 4k then no, it's not going to work with XP no matter what. If it's a 512E drive then you might be able to repartition/format, but keep in mind that anything over 2TB will be off limits to XP.

 

[Dark Lord of Tech]

That's why Toshiba won't say so it's 3tb.

 

[Methen]

Contact Toshiba and ask if the drive is native 4096 byte sectors or a 512E drive. If it's native 4k then no, it's not going to work with XP no matter what. If it's a 512E drive then you might be able to repartition/format, but keep in mind that anything over 2TB will be off limits to XP.

Well I have a Touro 4tb desk hard drive and it works and I already have 2.2 tb files on it...

 

[Solandri]

Well I have a Touro 4tb desk hard drive and it works and I already have 2.2 tb files on it...

Some of the >2 TB external drives have a translation layer built into the SATA-USB interface which covers up for the 512/4k or MBR/GPT difference and presents it to the computer as a legacy drive. XP can use those. But since Toshiba specifically said the 3 TB Canvio Connect II won't work with XP, I assume that translation layer is not present in that particular model.

The presence of this translation layer results in the odd stories you hear of people taking the drive out of the enclosure and plugging it directly into the desktop's SATA ports, but being unable to see their data. I dislike it because you're totally dependent on the enclosure to remain functional to have access to your data.

 

[Methen]

Have not been able to contact toshiba But I did find one site that says it does support xp, click where it says show more

http://www.target.com/p/toshiba-canvio-connect-ii-3tb-hard-drive-red-hdtc830xr3c1/-/A-17363398