Vista - WD external drive works with XP, not with Vista

Thanks, that sounds interesting. My problem is that I cannot see the drive
in "Computer", so I cannot carry out any of the stuff about taking ownership
as suggested on various forums.

The drive is formatted under NTFS as you guessed, but using a different PC
running XP, which I guess is causing the problem in Vista.

Would it be an idea to reconnect the drive to the old PC and somehow wipe it
clean without actually formatting it, then format it as if from new on the
Vista machine? Can you actually do this? Sorry if this sounds ignorant?

Andy G



"David Vair" <dvair@xxxxxx> wrote in message
news:eRI8oAdcJHA.3692@xxxxxx

OK, I'm finding this hard to believe, after several months fruitless effort,
but it seems to be fixed. As I said in my previous post, it had reverted
and I could not do anything with it, but your suggestion got me thinking and
it seemed to be the way to go. So I reconnected the drive to the old PC
running XP, deleted the partition and created a new one but did not format
it. Then I connected the drive to the new Vista machine and formatted it.
It now behaves totally as expected, shows up everywhere and allows full
access.

Thank you so much for your suggestions.

Cheers

Andy G.



"GTS" <x@xxxxxx> wrote in message
news:u8GB10ccJHA.5092@xxxxxx

OK, I'm finding this hard to believe, after several months fruitless effort,
but it seems to be fixed. I reconnected the drive to the old PC
running XP, deleted the partition and created a new one but did not format
it. Then I connected the drive to the new Vista machine and formatted it.
It now behaves totally as expected, shows up everywhere and allows full
access.

Probably obvious stuff to you but us mortals find it hard to sort the wheat
from the chaff when faced with uncooperative hardware... But why did Vista
not like the XP formatting. It's all NTFS?

Anyway, many thanks for your help.

Andy G.


"David Vair" <dvair@xxxxxx> wrote in message
news:eRI8oAdcJHA.3692@xxxxxx

NTFS has a lot to do with it. When you first create the volume it is given
access permissions based on the machine and user it was created on. When
switched over to a different machine the access permissions are what is
causing the new machine not to see the volume.
--
David Vair
CNE, CNA, MCP, A+, N+


"Andy G" <georgi66@xxxxxx> wrote in message
news:OWIxoQocJHA.1704@xxxxxx

You're welcome. I'm glad to hear it worked out.
--

"Andy G" <georgi66@xxxxxx> wrote in message
news:%23a6JMMocJHA.5412@xxxxxx

David,

I'm admittedly puzzled what happened for Andy G, but I'm not sure your
assessment is accurate. NTFS permissions are applied on a file and folder
(which is also a file strictly speaking) basis and not on the volume per
se. I don't know how many XP formatted drives I've connected by USB to my
Vista system for service purposes (certainly dozens) and have never seen a
problem recognizing a volume because of permissions. (I have often had to
take ownership of files on the drive to access them, but that's to be
expected and a different issue.) I have seen some odd issues with certain
USB adaptors, though, that seem to work unpredictably. Perhaps that's
involved.

GTS
--

"David Vair" <dvair@xxxxxx> wrote in message
news:eZNLf$ocJHA.1532@xxxxxx

If it sheds any light, I should add that I've had other problems involving
USB connected items, but also involving drivers where I would not expect a
problem.

For example, ever since a failed SP1 install, every time I boot up, system
tries to find drivers for the integral DVD drive. It always fails to find
any, but then the drive works anyway. Also an iPod and iPod Shuffle were
never recognised by iTunes under Vista, but worked fine on previous machine
with XP. Another problem, system will not recognise an HP flash drive,
(it's an HP laptop by the way!), which worked perfectly under XP.

The good news is that since applying your registry hack and the rebuild of
infcache.1 all of these problems have been resolved!

I now have a system working OK on all fronts, which I have never had since
buying the new Vista machine 11 months ago.

Going back to the external hard drive, it certainly seemed odd to me as an
ordinary user, that an external hard drive would be prohibited from being
moved from one PC to another. After all, what would be the point of using
it for backups, if you could not restore to a new machine if the first had a
catastrophic hardware failure?

Andy G


"GTS" <x@xxxxxx> wrote in message
news:Osx6b7pcJHA.556@xxxxxx