WinXP not recognising External Harddrive

obsydion · 27-10-2008 3:00pm #1

Hi there,

Problem: I have been using my external hardrive (Western Digital 2.5" 320GB Passport Essentials) as my backup disk on my Macbook (running OS X 10.5) using Time Machine. When I plug it into my work computer (running WinXP) it doesn't show up on My Computer at all. I have read somewhere that I should convert it to a Master Boot Record disk, but I am afraid it might wipe the existing data.

Can anyone be of assistance?

Cheers

aidan_walsh · 27-10-2008 3:23pm

Windows doesn't recognise the file system used by Time Machine.

obsydion · 27-10-2008 3:26pm

aidan_walsh wrote: »

Windows doesn't recognise the file system used by Time Machine.

That's probably true. However, I have a Macbook running XP on Boot Camp and it picks it up just fine.

MunsterCycling · 27-10-2008 3:53pm

Another reason never to use a Mac.

MC

obsydion · 27-10-2008 4:14pm

MunsterCycling wrote: »

Another reason never to use a Mac.

MC

Duly noted.

Anyone else?

Biggins · 27-10-2008 4:15pm

If its just for transfering files, you might want to have a read here: http://accurapid.com/journal/mac_pc.htm

aidan_walsh · 27-10-2008 4:17pm

MunsterCycling wrote: »

Another reason never to use a Mac.

MC

Seriously, if you don't want to contribute, don't bother posting.

obsydion · 27-10-2008 4:23pm

Biggins wrote: »

If its just for transfering files, you might want to have a read here: http://accurapid.com/journal/mac_pc.htm

Cheers

obsydion · 27-10-2008 4:24pm

aidan_walsh wrote: »

Seriously, if you don't want to contribute, don't bother posting.

I was going to say something but I thought I would leave it up to the moderators

MunsterCycling · 27-10-2008 5:02pm

aidan_walsh wrote: »

Seriously, if you don't want to contribute, don't bother posting.

Really??? Thought this was a PUBLIC forum! Only way around this is to use FAT32 on the disk or maybe someone has created a utility to read this obscure file structure anyhow the Mac warning remains valid.

MC

No mac fanboi's need comment.

aidan_walsh · 27-10-2008 5:19pm

Really??? Thought this was a PUBLIC forum!

Not a license to troll. If you want to offer an opinion, be prepared to back it up with substance and not a hit and run comment.

Consider this the warning.

Biggins · 27-10-2008 6:17pm

aidan_walsh wrote: »

Not a license to troll. If you want to offer an opinion, be prepared to back it up with substance and not a hit and run comment.

Consider this the warning.

Correct.
If you have feelings about something, there is other sections for expressing them or even other threads.
If someone comes along with a genuine problem, quick ab-libs do nothing to advance a persons predicament.
Sometime all of us, if not all, will have a problem (at some stage) and non-sensible posts are of no use within a serious situation.
Best left at that. We are here to help.

Back to the original task:

Here is some more link help:
http://www.allworldsoft.com/keywords/convert_mac_file_to_pc/
http://cg.scs.carleton.ca/~luc/ABFMac-PCConversion.pdf
http://cg.scs.carleton.ca/~luc/conversion.html
http://www.macdisk.com/annexeen.php3

Need more obsydion? Just let us know.
All the best and good luck.

obsydion · 30-10-2008 11:28am

Biggins wrote: »

Correct.
Back to the original task:

Here is some more link help:
http://www.allworldsoft.com/keywords/convert_mac_file_to_pc/
http://cg.scs.carleton.ca/~luc/ABFMac-PCConversion.pdf
http://cg.scs.carleton.ca/~luc/conversion.html
http://www.macdisk.com/annexeen.php3

Need more obsydion? Just let us know.
All the best and good luck.

Thanks for the links Biggins, but none of them alleviated the problem. This is very strange indeed. Flashdrives are compatible across both OSs and I know this harddrive has worked on other PCs running XP. What I have noticed is that the computer actually does recognise it because when I go to unmount it from the system tray, it exists for me to do so, albeit with no drive letter designation. I have gone into Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Computer Management (Storage > Disk Management) and it also exists there next to my C: drive. Again it is missing a drive letter designation and there's no indication as to what format it is in (I think it is FAT32 anyway). Under 'Status' it says it is a 'Healthy (GPT Protective Partition)' and that I have 100% free space. This is incorrect as I know there is only about 50-70GB left (thanks to 10 seasons of SG-1

). That's all the info I have for now...

alhimself · 10-11-2008 1:59am

Same problem although doesnt show up anywhere except under unknown device in the usb controllers tab in the device manager.girlfriends drive so she wont be impressed!! help needed!! eeek! always been ran on xp and was workin until 2days ago fine
sorry cant be any help to original poster btw. help them first!!!

obsydion · 10-11-2008 12:24pm

alhimself wrote: »

Same problem although doesnt show up anywhere except under unknown device in the usb controllers tab in the device manager.girlfriends drive so she wont be impressed!! help needed!! eeek! always been ran on xp and was workin until 2days ago fine
sorry cant be any help to original poster btw. help them first!!!

OK it seems to be a partition problem as suggested by other posters. I assume the harddrive was shipped in MBR (Master Boot Record) format as it is predominantly aimed at PC customers. Unfortunately if you plug it into a Mac OS X system, Time Machine will just take over and mess up the MBR. As far as I know you can't partition the drive so that half can be accessed by OS X and the other by PC...to my knowledge. I might just buy a new HDD and dedicate it to my PC

spannerotoole · 24-11-2008 1:25pm

The MBR is not a format, the MBR is the first 512K of the disk, you can place any code in here and it will run, generally something like grub or lilo lives here. Because you're not booting from it, you should still be able to read it. Now I know that apple love to obscure information whenever they can get a hold of it (FreeBSD=OS X Anyone?) here's what you need to do....

Get a second drive, get knoppix, plug in both drives, Knoppix should read the disk. Copy all of your files over to the new disk, reformat old disk, give disk back to girlfriend, everyone's a winner. (Of course, but the GF's Data back on the disk)

spannerotoole · 24-11-2008 2:00pm

aidan_walsh wrote: »

Not a license to troll. If you want to offer an opinion, be prepared to back it up with substance and not a hit and run comment.

Consider this the warning.

I don't use macs because CoreAudio is not compatible with 24bit sound. this makes recording in reason impossible when working with 24bit samples.
Other reasons....

BSOD Gives you a nice error message that you can check out and see what it means.

OSX : Pretty Little pinwheel that goes around that can mean anything from "The program you were using has stopped responding" to "Kernel Panic"

Windows - Wide range of quality software
Linux -Wider range of free quality software
OS X : If it wasn't designed by apple then we're going to make it crash.

Windows - Users know about Viruses - and viruses are getting harder to make for windows.
OSX : Very simple to write a hardware virus, as the mac uses all the same hardware.

Windows works with all my external hardware
Linux works with ALL my hardware
OS X: I don't see a driver for that, you cannot use it, (This goes for Printers and Scanners too btw)

In conclusion... OSX Sucks like no OS ever sucked before, sure it's fine if all you want to do is write emails and blog

WinXP not recognising External Harddrive

Comments