David,

I'm admittedly puzzled what happened for Andy G, but I'm not sure your
assessment is accurate. NTFS permissions are applied on a file and folder
(which is also a file strictly speaking) basis and not on the volume per
se. I don't know how many XP formatted drives I've connected by USB to my
Vista system for service purposes (certainly dozens) and have never seen a
problem recognizing a volume because of permissions. (I have often had to
take ownership of files on the drive to access them, but that's to be
expected and a different issue.) I have seen some odd issues with certain
USB adaptors, though, that seem to work unpredictably. Perhaps that's
involved.

GTS
--

"David Vair" <dvair@nycap.rr.com> wrote in message
news:eZNLf$ocJHA.1532@TK2MSFTNGP03.phx.gbl...[color=blue]
> NTFS has a lot to do with it. When you first create the volume it is
> given access permissions based on the machine and user it was created on.
> When switched over to a different machine the access permissions are what
> is causing the new machine not to see the volume.
> --
> David Vair
> CNE, CNA, MCP, A+, N+
>
>
> "Andy G" <georgi66@otenet.gr> wrote in message
> news:OWIxoQocJHA.1704@TK2MSFTNGP05.phx.gbl...[color=green]
>> OK, I'm finding this hard to believe, after several months fruitless
>> effort,
>> but it seems to be fixed. I reconnected the drive to the old PC
>> running XP, deleted the partition and created a new one but did not
>> format
>> it. Then I connected the drive to the new Vista machine and formatted
>> it.
>> It now behaves totally as expected, shows up everywhere and allows full
>> access.
>>
>> Probably obvious stuff to you but us mortals find it hard to sort the
>> wheat from the chaff when faced with uncooperative hardware... But why
>> did Vista not like the XP formatting. It's all NTFS?
>>
>> Anyway, many thanks for your help.
>>
>> Andy G.
>>
>>
>> "David Vair" <dvair@nycap.rr.com> wrote in message
>> news:eRI8oAdcJHA.3692@TK2MSFTNGP04.phx.gbl...[color=darkred]
>>> If it was formatted with NTFS there may be some ownership issues.
>>> Google taking ownership of a drive and there are several step by step
>>> walkthroughs to show how to take ownership of the drive.
>>>
>>> --
>>> David Vair
>>> CNE, CNA, MCP, A+, N+
>>>
>>>[/color][/color]
>[/color]

If it sheds any light, I should add that I've had other problems involving
USB connected items, but also involving drivers where I would not expect a
problem.

For example, ever since a failed SP1 install, every time I boot up, system
tries to find drivers for the integral DVD drive. It always fails to find
any, but then the drive works anyway. Also an iPod and iPod Shuffle were
never recognised by iTunes under Vista, but worked fine on previous machine
with XP. Another problem, system will not recognise an HP flash drive,
(it's an HP laptop by the way!), which worked perfectly under XP.

The good news is that since applying your registry hack and the rebuild of
infcache.1 all of these problems have been resolved!

I now have a system working OK on all fronts, which I have never had since
buying the new Vista machine 11 months ago.

Going back to the external hard drive, it certainly seemed odd to me as an
ordinary user, that an external hard drive would be prohibited from being
moved from one PC to another. After all, what would be the point of using
it for backups, if you could not restore to a new machine if the first had a
catastrophic hardware failure?

Andy G


"GTS" <x@y.net> wrote in message
news:Osx6b7pcJHA.556@TK2MSFTNGP06.phx.gbl...[color=blue]
> David,
>
> I'm admittedly puzzled what happened for Andy G, but I'm not sure your
> assessment is accurate. NTFS permissions are applied on a file and
> folder (which is also a file strictly speaking) basis and not on the
> volume per se. I don't know how many XP formatted drives I've connected
> by USB to my Vista system for service purposes (certainly dozens) and have
> never seen a problem recognizing a volume because of permissions. (I have
> often had to take ownership of files on the drive to access them, but
> that's to be expected and a different issue.) I have seen some odd
> issues with certain USB adaptors, though, that seem to work unpredictably.
> Perhaps that's involved.
>
> GTS
> --[/color]

I have a very similar problem though not the same symptoms.

I have a drive that works fine on XP machines, USED to work fine on
Vista and Windows 7 machines, but which no longer work on either Vista
or Win7.

I first encountered the problem with out disconnecting the drive from
my machine (so i knew it wasn't a physical line problem).

I have a dual boot Linux/XP machine. From XP i have been running a
Virtual Machine of Win7 RC for a while testing it out for my work.

The great thing about VMWare Player is that you can connect (to the
virtual machine) a USB connected to the physical machine, this
disconnects the device from the physical machine.

I've been using my WD hard drive like that for at least 4 months with
out any problems (In the windows 7 VirtualMachine).


I had it mounted in windows 7 and then unmounted it.

I don't remember if the following section occured before it stopped
working but when i next mounted it to the VM, it stopped working.

****************************************************
This may or may not have happened in between but...

I deleted 3 folders that had filenames of about 8-16(?) characters
long, each made up of seamingly random chacters - like when windows
calls for a temp file names (ie like for temp install directories)

before i deleted them i inspected them first and i remember thinking
that they were left over install install folders. However it may have
been that i was deleteing files that get assigned once you use the drive
from a vista(or win7) machine.

*****************************************************
Now i did't think that it would work that way since the first time you
would use a drive from a machine it would create those files (if they
were missing i would think it would create them again).

I will make sure that i have uninstalled the device from the win7 box
tomorrow and see if it doesn't work any more.

The other machine that i'm typing this from now is a vista box that
i've used the HD from before which no longer works aswell.

I will post back here again after i've tried what i've suggested above.


--
MatthewV
Posted via [url]http://www.vistaheads.com[/url]

i posted that comment last night but for some reason it didn't work.

H have now removed the hard drive and deleted it from the system using
devcon and then re added it again. This still didn't solve the problem.
I then repeated that with a shutdown/startup in the middle of it for
good measure. Still no luck.

I thought that ide post the error when i try to connect to the
partition.
This is a Ctrl-C from the error message box

[Window Title]
Location is not available
[Content]
F:\ is not accessible.
The file or directory is corrupted and unreadable.
[OK]

Note that i'm currently listening to some music from that same
partition on XP it is definitely not broken.

under the disk manager the partition shows up as RAW format even though
it is definitely NTFS.

Any ideas folks?


--
MatthewV
Posted via [url]http://www.vistaheads.com[/url]

Are the drivers you are using the latest from the Western Digital Website?
If not and they are from WinUpdate that could be the cause of your problem.

"MatthewV" <MatthewV.3xw403@no-mx.forums.vistaheads.com> wrote in message
news:MatthewV.3xw403@no-mx.forums.vistaheads.com...[color=blue]
>
> i posted that comment last night but for some reason it didn't work.
>
> H have now removed the hard drive and deleted it from the system using
> devcon and then re added it again. This still didn't solve the problem.
> I then repeated that with a shutdown/startup in the middle of it for
> good measure. Still no luck.
>
> I thought that ide post the error when i try to connect to the
> partition.
> This is a Ctrl-C from the error message box
>
> [Window Title]
> Location is not available
> [Content]
> F:\ is not accessible.
> The file or directory is corrupted and unreadable.
> [OK]
>
> Note that i'm currently listening to some music from that same
> partition on XP it is definitely not broken.
>
> under the disk manager the partition shows up as RAW format even though
> it is definitely NTFS.
>
> Any ideas folks?
>
>
> --
> MatthewV
> Posted via [url]http://www.vistaheads.com[/url]
>[/color]

No there was definitely no update to the drivers. I've got automatic
updates turned off.

And i definitely hadn't put any updates on manually since it was just a
test system.

I'm certain that it has nothing to do with drivers.
But just to make sure it's not any other thing like that i will revert
to a snapshot of the sytem from 4 months ago where the drive was
definitely still working.



Curious;1549967 Wrote:[color=blue]
> Are the drivers you are using the latest from the Western Digital
> Website?
> If not and they are from WinUpdate that could be the cause of your
> problem.
>
> "MatthewV" <MatthewV.3xw403@no-mx.forums.vistaheads.com> wrote in
> message
> news:MatthewV.3xw403@no-mx.forums.vistaheads.com...[color=green]
> >
> > i posted that comment last night but for some reason it didn't work.
> >
> > H have now removed the hard drive and deleted it from the system[/color]
> using[color=green]
> > devcon and then re added it again. This still didn't solve the[/color]
> problem.[color=green]
> > I then repeated that with a shutdown/startup in the middle of it for
> > good measure. Still no luck.
> >
> > I thought that ide post the error when i try to connect to the
> > partition.
> > This is a Ctrl-C from the error message box
> >
> > [Window Title]
> > Location is not available
> > [Content]
> > F:\ is not accessible.
> > The file or directory is corrupted and unreadable.
> > [OK]
> >
> > Note that i'm currently listening to some music from that same
> > partition on XP it is definitely not broken.
> >
> > under the disk manager the partition shows up as RAW format even[/color]
> though[color=green]
> > it is definitely NTFS.
> >
> > Any ideas folks?
> >
> >
> > --
> > MatthewV
> > Posted via [url]http://www.vistaheads.com[/url]
> >[/color][/color]


--
MatthewV
Posted via [url]http://www.vistaheads.com[/url]

MatthewV;1549999 Wrote:[color=blue]
> No there was definitely no update to the drivers. I've got automatic
> updates turned off.
>
> And i definitely hadn't put any updates on manually since it was just a
> test system.
>
> I'm certain that it has nothing to do with drivers.
> But just to make sure it's not any other thing like that i will revert
> to a snapshot of the sytem from 4 months ago where the drive was
> definitely still working.[/color]
I have check it out on more Vista machines.... it's Definitly a problem
with Win7 and vistas implementation of NTFS. It works everywhere else
that i've tried it.

I've bought another 1.5 to copy my data to and i'm in the process of
copying all the data from my existing hard drive to the second one now.
Once that's done i'll reformat the drive and it should all be
functional again.

PS.

To access the drive from one of the Vista machines i needed it on I:
- downloaded unbuntu;
- installed that on a small virtual machine;
- installed samba;
- connected the USB drive to the vista machine;
- and once vista picked up the hardware i connected it to the virtual
machine;
- shared the usb hard drive from the virtual machine; and finally
- accessed the share from the vista machine...

very annoying way of having to do it but still it worked.
If you can't go buying another hard drive then it might be the way to
go for you.

Tools i used to do it are all free.

VMX Builder - To help make a virtual machine config file
QEmu (more specifically qemu-img which i used to make the virtual hard
drive for the virtual machine)
VMWare Player - to play the virtual machine
ubuntu - to access and share the hard drive

Any linux would have been fine.
It's just that ubuntu was the fastest download that i could get.
In fact even windows xp would have been fine except that i didn't have
another licence for XP.


--
MatthewV
Posted via [url]http://www.vistaheads.com[/url]