Hi, as the title suggests got problems with finding any external hdd to work with XP - there must be a way!
Story: I bought the 4TB (WDBWLG0040HBK-AESN) but when i installed it the device driver loaded up ok and it shows on the task bar in the ‘safely remove hardware’ icon BUT it doesn’t have a drive letter! and in ‘my computer’ it doesn’t show up so i can’t do anything with this drive. Tried disk manager but it won’t show up there either. I returned the drive and got a refund but need some storage but everything these days does not support XP!!
I bought a WD 3TB 2 years ago and on the box it mentions support for XP and that has worked fine and still going with no probs at all. I saw this post by a user earlier.
“I had the same problem. I used a program called “Partition Magic” made by PowerQuest to re-partition the drive. But, since XP wasn’t seeing the drive, I had to utilize a computer with Windows 7 OS. Once on Win7, with the drive found, the software lets you right click on the drive and select “Delete Volume”. Size your partition. Choose your volume name. and tell it to go ahead. Then let it format the drive. Reason for this is that the new Elements are not partitioned in MBR, but only GBT. The software puts in MBR partitions that XP can see.
I understand this can be done in Win 7 without extra software, but I had the software so. But again, you need access to a computer with Win 7 or above OS.”
but i don’t know what size the external HDD was or exactly what type (if that makes any diff). If i followed the above will i be ok with the 4TB or even a 3TB as now that the computer shop knows XP is not supported i will not get a refund if i return the product because i can’t get it to work in XP - has to be faulty. Also, even though i’m using XP my computer is fairly new (sata and all) and has the EUID bios or whatever it’s called.
Any help/info appreciated!
