MY External HDD drive not recognized on my xp machines

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spincus2000

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Jan 24, 2016
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I have a Toshiba External HDD which is not being recognized by any of my xp machines but works fine on my windows 8.1 and windows 10 machines. This started when my son "borrowed" the drive for something and plugged it into a windows 10 machine.Now it is no longer recognized y the windows xp machine I normally use it with, nor my other xp machine. It works fine on my Windows 8.1 machine and his Windows 10 machine. He said a message came up when he plugged it into his windows 10 machine and he clicked to correct the error. I think that may have started this problem. Anyone know how to correct this so I can use it on my xp machine again?
 
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Personally the thing I can think of now is to backup your data on the external HDD to another computer, cloud, server, whatever.
Once your data on the HDD is backed up, I would use a computer which works with the external HDD, right click the external HDD, click format and choose FAT32. Formatting the drive will delete everything on the drive (so have a backup in case). it should then work for your xp machine.
 
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Hi there spincus2000,

My suggestion would be to start with just backing up the data stored on the drive until you sort this out.
This error correction message could have been associated with disk check. So, you can just test your drive it order to check its health status out: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/282651-32-best-diagnostic-testing-utility

In case the drive is healthy, you can go to the MOBO's website of your XP system and update the USB drivers. Does the issue persist? Check if the drive is recognized by Disk Management and Device Manager.

I guess you can try what iceblitzed suggested as well. If nothing works, back up your data and reformat the drive.

Let us know how this goes,
D_Know_WD
 
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D_Know_WD:

Realized that MOBO is probably motherboard, is that correct? If so, how do I find out whose board I have. Unfortunately, I need a lot of hand holding here since my resident helper (my son) is back at school and not as helpful as when he is here at home. Thanks for your help with this and I hope you can have patience with a not very computer savvy older dad.
 
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So all the fields in the SMART report provided by the testing tool were ok right? Take a look at reallocated/pending/uncorrectable sectors count.

You can find out what is your MOBO the following way: All Programs > Accessories > System Tools, then select the System Information utility.
The System Manufacturer should be the MOBO manufacturer and the System Model should indicate the MOBO model.

Let me know in case you have some more questions,
D_Know_WD :)
 
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D_Know_WD :

Need to head out for the day but I'll try these things again tonight. One question though: I've been able to use the drive on both windows 8 and windows 10 machines but it doesn't work on any of my xp machines. I have tried three of them. If it was a driver problem, wouldn't that be on one machine but not all of them? It seems like the drive has somehow been altered in some way that makes it incompatible with the xp machines but not 8 or 10 machines. Is that possible?
 
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D_Know_WD:
The drive is TB.

Not sure how to check the device mgr, disk management or BIOS. May need some help with that. It does not show up when I look at windows explore. That is all I know so far. Not near the machine right now but will be home later to try checking, if you give me some advice on how to do that.
 
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Thanks jsmithpa, but the drive is only 1 TB and worked fine on this machine for over a year until this situation arose.I will look it up though. Who knows? I might find something that helps.

 
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Joe:
I did ask and he said he got an error message and clicked repair. his machine is a window 10 machine. He doesn't remember what the message was exactly.

I am able to access the drive on my windows 8.1 machine, just not the xp machines, which is where I use this device. I think you may be right that the xp machines are not recognizing the format but I don't know how to correct this without reformatting the entire disk after backing it up somewhere, as has been suggested.

 
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Is this an advanced format drive? What brand and model?
You can check it that way on a system that recognizes the drive, lets say your Win 8 system: Start > Run > cmd > enter the command fsutil fsinfo ntfsinfo <drive letter>:
Example: (if we assume that the HDD in question appears as E: ) fsutil fsinfo ntfsinfo E:

Look for Bytes Per Physical Sector.
512 - for Legacy 512 native drives
4096 - for Advanced Format (AF) drives

If the drive is Advanced format, then you can check this article out: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/2510009
It may have something to do with the issue you are facing.

Depending on the brand of the drive, there should be some sort of a tool that should be able to reformat the drive so it will be accessible by Win XP.
In Western Digital's case, it is this one: http://products.wdc.com/support/kb.ashx?id=9KNOEX
There is an option for a format that would be XP compatible.

D_Know_WD
 
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MS Has a habit of updating the NTFS format with each build of Windows, a drive formatted on XP would be accessible on W10, but a drive formatted (or repaired) on W10 won't necessarily be accessible on XP; only answer is (as suggested) is to back-up everything on W10, reformat on XP and restore; it's a pain in the... and no easy way round it.
 
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