Vista File System

[themidastouch]

Does anyone know (can explain) or point me in the direction of where I might be able to discern the subtle differences in the Vista file system (possibly x64) and the XP file system (basic stuff not BitLocker and EFS)? I've got an external HD at work that someone plugged into a Vista Business x64 copied some files to it and the next time it was used on the normal XP Pro workstation, the file system was unreadable and upon access asks the user if they want to format the drive. Yeah I know, Vista wouldn't corrupt the file system in this manner but I need to be able to logically explain that to management before they unfairly banish our Vista test bed boxes from our environment. Anyone got any ideas?!?
Thanks,
Steve

 

[firesuite]

Im not having a problem with this. I have vista 64 at home and use a XP machine and a vista business 32bit laptop at work. My 100gb drive i take between work and home daily i have no trouble with it not reading on any machine. Are you sure that the business machine is not using bitlocker?, ive had no experience with bitlocker yet but i cant think of any reason why that would happen other than bitlocker or maybe the vista machine was still writing to the hard disk when it was removed from the system (could but not always causes problems) did you stop the device before removing it?

Also if you ask me, they shouldnt banish your Vista test bed boxes because of this, these are the sort of problems you want to acknowledge and find a fix for in a test enviroment

 

[kelleyu]

Also, you have to remember that Vista's file caching system is far more aggressive than XP's. If you write a large number of files to a USB mass storage device, and unplug the drive before the cache is cleared, you stand a good chance of corrupting the index, particularly with FAT32 partitions (as most USB drives are configured).

I have gotten into the habit of ALWAYS using the Safely Remove icon on the taskbar to ensure that the cache is cleared (since I trashed my flash drive a couple of times).

Sometimes the partition can be recovered using the disk scanner.

K.

 

[Payne747]

Anyone responsible for testing new operating systems should know that both Vista and XP are more then capable of corrupting an entire filesystem should it not be ejected properly, or perhaps the drivers we being automatically installed while the drive was in use. That doesn't mean a test environment should be pulled, but I would certainly recommend more testing with that specific type of external hard disk on Vista. Perhaps checking the manufacturer website to see if there are known issues, later drivers, or incompatibilities between Vista and the chipset used in the external HDD.