External HD no longer compatible with vista?!

[Total Oblivion Omnis]

The HD I'm using is a WD 500 GB model. It was supposedly compatible with vista when I bought it, it said it on the box. Long story short, I ended up formatting the disk to have 2 NTFS partitions instead of leaving the HD with the original 1 FAT32 partition. The HD worked flawlessly on both vista and XP (I dual boot). I have a desktop computer with XP Pro SP2 and Windows Vista Ultimate 64 bit. I also have a toshiba A205 laptop with Windows Vista Home Premium 32 bit. Only a couple of weeks ago did my HD start showing strange behavior.

My HD used to work on my laptop, but one day the laptop just said something along the lines of: You need to format the drive before you can use it. *WTF!? IT IS FORMATTED U STUPID COMPUTER* was the first thing I thought.

My HD used to work just fine with my computer when it started up, but now things are different. When starting up into XP I get through the XP loading screen with the blue dotted scrolling bar below the logo just fine, but before it gets to the welcome screen it shows a black screen with my mouse pointer on it. I can move the mouse pointer around just fine, but XP just sits there... and sits there... and sits there for minutes until it finally makes it to the welcome screen.

However, if I plug in the drive after XP has started up, things seem normal again. Windows XP starts up in seconds, I can play my games and run other programs off the HD like normal.

Vista Ultimate 64 bit asks me to format my external HD just like my laptop does.

[Total Oblivion Omnis]

Re: External HD no longer compatible with vista?!

Arrrrgh! Now it's no longer compatible with windows XP! XP is giving me I/O device errors. It was working fine then it suddenly got REALLY slow and made "clicking noises".

IT'S ONLY TWO MONTHS OLD!

What should I do? It has a lot of important data on it. I'm not about to spend $$$$ to get the HD restored. It's still under the manufacturer's warranty, and IIRC, data loss isn't covered. I hear putting the HD in a plastic bag and freezing it will make it work again. For a very limited time...

[Kheldar]

Re: External HD no longer compatible with vista?!

ok its probably getting too hot - stick a big chuncky desk fan pointing at it and see how it goes, or maybe open the side of it

[Total Oblivion Omnis]

Re: External HD no longer compatible with vista?!

I've even tried putting my external HD over a vent while the air conditioner was running. Still, no luck. I don't want to freeze the HD because it may invalidate the warranty. After an almost 30 minute hold I got ahold of a tech support rep from WD. I'm getting a replacement in "3-5 working days". It's been 3 working days, for sure. Still waiting (this would be the fourth, if saturday is a "working day"). Unfortunately, data recovery is not an option. Next time I buy a HD it's gonna have S.M.A.R.T. and it's gonna be inside. Heck, I might even take a stab at the new solid-state memory storage in the future (if the price/gig goes WAAAAY down). Could be useful for storing an OS on with current storage capacity.

[Poseidonas]

Re: External HD no longer compatible with vista?!

Next time, get a Seagate. 5yr warranty and more reliable.

If you get a drive with an enclosure seperate, you can usually get the data off before it completely craps out. Because its in a enclosure from the factory, it is attempting to use the USB board in there and where it is accessing the data on the HDD to initialize is corrupted. By using the IDE or SATA channel, you are bypassing the error and can thus get the data off before replacement.

And, of course, drives are cheaper as OEM and barebones. U can get excellent enclosures from Vantec, for example.