Transferring data from external hard drive

[flan_taster]

I store things on an External Hard Drive using a USB and this is from a Vista Home Premium Dell PC. I need to transfer some files onto a Netbook running XP. So I plug the external hard drive into the Netbook USB and it recognises a device on the bottom bar -- the one I click to remove a device safely -- but it is not showing on My Computer so I am not able to open.

What am I doing wrong ?

[Enrique]

Hi flan_taster,
Remove it using the Remove.............plug into another USB port ...should run through new hardware etc..

[flan_taster]

Did that but still not accepting the external hard drive.
Looking at the device in Windows it looks as though it could open but has GPT Protective Partition against the word HEALTHY !!! See screen picture :


I have about 200GB of material on the External Hard Drive so do not want to lose anything by any silly mistake !
I realise that a Netbook may not have the same capacity as a larger machine but I can open flash drives with no trouble.
Does this mean that I am forced to download one by one stuff onto a flash drive and then upload to the Netbook.
I had a problem with a new Orange Dongle not loading and took the Netbook in for basically reinstalling Windows and the Dongle works but now the external HD doesn't.

[.Griff.]

Your problem here is a combination of a GPT Partition and your operating system, Windows XP.

As far as I know, or at least as far as I can remember, XP (x86 and x64) has no support at all for GPT Partitions.

You best bet it to re-attach the drive to your Vista machine, transfer the files from the external drive to the main HDD, reformat the external drive as NTFS and transfer the files back onto it. XP will happily deal with NTFS.

[Enrique]

Hi flan_taster,
Looks like its .Griff's way to go ...............

[flan_taster]

Thank you both. This is getting beyond me - I think. Nevertheless will try to work it out ! By the way, when I open the external HD and look at the properties on the Vista PC it says the file system is NTFS (as the PC HD) - and same NTFS system that shows on the Netbook HD. Both PC and Netbook run on 32 bit operating system. But I just pulled a Microsoft page (thanks to your information) that tells me:
..............................
Can the 32-bit version of Windows XP read, write, and boot from GUID Partition Table disks?

No. The 32-bit version will see only the Protective MBR. The EE partition will not be mounted or otherwise exposed to program software.
.................................
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/302873

So as you say, all to do with partitions ! And presumably VISTA is cleverer than XP in this respect.

[Campo Steve]

I had a similar problem in that I have an external hard drive that worked fine with my old PC and with the laptop (XP and Vista respectively). Then I got my current PC running W7 and it won't recognise it. The drive is a few years old and not supported.

However, I can access the laptop from the PC as they are on a wireless network so I just connect the drive to the laptop and access it from the PC that way. Not ideal, but it works.

[Enrique]

Hi flan_taster,
Well spotted by you on Disc manager..........

Further to above posts, get data off on to Vista system.............then format drive NTFS using an XP system.....or check out format options on Vista system.

http://pcsupport.about.com/od/windowsvi ... -vista.htm