Question SSD External Not Recognized By Old Win XP PC

[Lacene]

Hello. I have an old Windows XP PC with a 500GB internal HDD that still has some 280+ GB available storage space. But the PC is really old - an Dell 32-bit PC, and the monitor is starting to have issues. I ALSO have a brand new Dell Inspiron desktop 64-bit with Win 11, and 500GB internal SSD storage. Further, I recently purchased a 500GB Samsung Portable external SDD "T7" storage device.

My intent was to use the external SSD T7 to download all valuable files and data from the WinXP machine, and either relocate it to my Win11 PC, or just keep the data on my external SSD. I followed the instructions to format the SSD, and it reads 465 available GB of storage on my Win11 machine. But when I plug it into my WinXP PC, it only reads as having total storage size of 41.8MB, and available space of 788 KB. I believe that this may be because it was formatted by default in exFAT, but not sure.

My question is, is there any method to get the external SSD to be recognized by my WinXP PC? This was the reason why I got the external SSD to begin with, and didn't foresee that my older PC wouldn't be compatible with it. Thanks for any help you can give.....

 

[Aeacus]

I believe that this may be because it was formatted by default in exFAT, but not sure.

XP supports NTFS and FAT32.

My question is, is there any method to get the external SSD to be recognized by my WinXP PC?

Why to do it the hard way when there's easy way as well?

Just pull the old HDD from old PC and plug it into your new PC as data drive. With this, it's just matter of copy/paste the data over. Oh, don't run any programs on your old HDD since those are tied to Win XP.

 

[sonofjesse]

Take the drive out, recycle the computer.

 

[Lacene]

Sorry for the delay in responding to your suggestions. Thanks for those, by the way. By using my old HDD as a data drive for my new PC, how do I do that? Do you mean installing it internally, or as an external drive? Will I need an adapter? The HDD is a Seagate 500GB SATA 7200 RPM drive that came with a SATA interface cable and a STAT power cable, which both are for internal use.

The thing with my Samsung SSD external drive, it came with loaded software that wouldn't load on my old XP PC, but it loaded on my Win11 machine. That may be an issue as well.

I had thought of getting some use out of my HDD out of my old XP machine, as it is newer than the PC. The PC came with a 250GB HDD that crashed during a ice storm - the ice storm wasn't what caused it, it was my crappy local power provider that kept shutting off and turning back on the power during the storm, that broke my old HDD. But while I had growing issues with the Firefox Browser that's the only browser I could still use with XP, and my monitor was struggling to turn on, the hard drive seemed fine, but I didn't know how to connect it to my new PC. Any help there would be great!

 

[sonofjesse]

You can put it inside your new PC assuming its SATA, or you can purchase a dock. . I purchase a Hard Drive dock, it will do all 2.5" or 3.5" SATA drives. It's super hand. Just go on amazon and find one you like. Having a dock is just super handy in general. I would buy a dock and you could us this 500gb (Assuming its not super old with a ton of bad sectors) as a part of your backup plan. Since your windows 11 will be able to read your old XP formated drive, you can just copy the data off to the SSD external, then format the old 500GB drive. I would use one of these drives as a cold backup off site.

Always have your PC on a UPS, this will save you from brown outs.

 

[Aeacus]

Do you mean installing it internally, or as an external drive? Will I need an adapter? The HDD is a Seagate 500GB SATA 7200 RPM drive that came with a SATA interface cable and a STAT power cable, which both are for internal use.

My suggestion was for internal installation, since this way, only SATA data and power cables are needed, which you should have.

External installation, by the form of docking bay, while somewhat convenient, means that you have to buy the dock as well, and connect that to your PC. (If internal dock, you need 3.5" external bay on your PC case, or 5.25" external bay with 3.5" conversion frame, if the internal dock is 3.5" in size. External dock uses USB to connect to the PC.)
Though, with any kind of backup, all forms of docks are best avoided.

Always have your PC on a UPS, this will save you from brown outs.

Not only that, but for surges and blackouts as well, if UPS has AVR built-in. Stand-by UPSes doesn't have AVR and protect only against blackouts.

 

[popatim]

If you install kb955704 on the XP system it will support exfat.