Older My Book WD3200D032 not recognized by Windows 8.1

WD External Drives External Drives for PC
1

My external drive works fine with my windows XP laptop, bought a new PC with Windows 8.1 and it will not recognize it

I get this message when I check under properties.

This device is not working properly because Windows cannot load the drivers required for this device. (Code 31)

The specified request is not a valid operation for the target device.

If I plug it to my XP it works great.  Any help or suggestions?

2

Welcome to the Community.

It is possible for the device drivers to be incompatible with Windows 8.1 due to its age. As a test, I’d recommend confirming if it works with Microsoft Windows 7 first. if it does then the hard drive should be formatted in Windows 7 to NTFS before attempting to connect it again once more to Windows 8.1.

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3

Thank you for your response, I was thinking the same, but hoping there was a workaround to make it work on Windows 8.1 without having to transfer everything to a new drive.