Windows XP Cannot read files on USB Hard Drive

[spencer-arts 0]

I have a Windows 98 computer connected to the internet, an old windows XP system & a brand new windows XP system that aren't.

I have previously downloaded files from the windows 98 computer onto an external usb hard drive, and transferred them to the old XP system via the usb drive with no problem.

Today I tried transfer files to the old XP system , the drive is being picked up but the files cannot be read , it says they are corrupted ( even though windows 98 can run them ).

 

I tried to transfer the files to his new XP system & the same problem occured. How can I get these files off the external usb drive ???

( My cd/dvd writer is not reliable )

 

I Plugged drive into old Windows XP System , it 'dinged' to confirm connection of usb device, it was not listed in 'my computer' & 'my computer' actually froze, I went into 'disk management' drive was listed- basic partition, healthy active, but free space was listed as 149 out of 149 GB.

 

Plugged usb drive back into win98 system, files all ok, ( was able to install software from it , run/ save web pages from it, & view movies & pictures )

.

One thing I have remembered, winXP used to show more free space available than win98 did.

 

Any ideas?

[jmmijo 1]

Hmm, since you are transferring data to this device via Win 98 and this OS only supports using FAT32, I wonder if there is an issue with the partition size of that device and the cluster size in order to use the entire 160GB ?!?

 

I've never used any drive over 80GB for a FAT32 partition due to the cluster sizing of that filesystem and prefer to use NTFS instead. However, Win 98 can't read/write NTFS filesystem drives unless there are some third party device drivers that would allow this. I do believe there are at least one that allows you to read from an NTFS formatted drive, not sure about writing however.

 

What I would be testing is to see if you can resize that FAT32 partition to something smaller like 40 or 80 GB and see if XP has issues with that or not.

 

So I also take it that you are using a dial-up modem for internet connection ?!? If so then I can't really see using ICS to connect all the machines together on such a narrow pipe.

[Sampson 0]

More mysteries of the nefarious USB port. It sounds like that it did work at one point and now it has stopped working. With both W2K and XP whenever you put something into a USB port, it goes "Thunk" and a little icon appears (unlike 98). Thing is, to disconnect the appliance from the USB, you don't just pull it out of the socket, you have to go through the procedure to disconnect it. You can get away with unplugging it but at some point it bites you back.

 

If it had been working previously, (and this is going to sound ridiculous), shut down the old XP machine and completely unplug the computer from the wall plug for about an hour. I do not know why, but this will sometimes work.

[grenades911 0]

Hi. I was facing this same problem just 3 mins back. I have 2 computers, both Win XP SP2, with USB 2.0 ports and connected to the internet. I transfered data to my 250GB external HDD but couldnt read a few files on the other system. Problem was not with all files... just a few. Each system that had uploaded the data onto the drive could access but the other system couldnt.

 

Then I came across the following documents.

 

http://www.techspot.com/vb/all/windows/t...00-install.html

 

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;308421&Product=winxp

 

Enjoy.