[raekah]

Okay, I am clueless about this. I have had a FAT32 WD External Hard Drive which has been working on my laptop with windows VISTA for a few years now when I've tried to help out my sister who transferred video files to the hard drive on Windows 7. Unfortunately, the file transferring was unsuccessful, creating a freeze on my sister's computer which research has led me to believe that windows 7 is somehow incompatible with FAT32 systems. Therefore I used a different WD External hard drive with a NTFS system which works perfectly.

I now understand that windows 7 and fat32 are incompatible; but after my sister on Windows 7 attempted to transfer files, and had it fail - I can no longer transfer on what was a perfectly fine WD External FAT32 hard drive on a Windows Vista which should be compatible but it now doesn't. It registers, I can access the files, I haven't tested as to whether I can copy FROM the hard drive itself, but I cannot transfer files to the hard drive. It shows the loading screen, but it never copies. I suspect it may have something to do with my sister installing the intended programs which I never intended to install but how can I fix this to work on vista again?

Edited by raekah, 17 August 2010 - 04:38 PM.

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Fat 32 has a size limitation of 32gb.
NTFS can read and write to Fat 32/ Fat 16 formats.
Fat 32/Fat 16 can not see NTFS partitions.
The SD cards and flash (USB) sticks are Fat 32 so that they will work in NTFS, Macs, and NTFS.

It probably crashed and corrupted the drive because the size limit is 32gb and the file size limit is 4gb.

Limitations

Go to

Start and then to Run
Type in Chkdsk /r Note the space between k and /
Click Enter ...It will probably ask if you want to do this on the next reboot...click Y
If the window doesn't shutdown on its own then reboot the system manually. On reboot the system will start the chkdsk operation
This one will take longer then chkdsk /f

Note... there are 5 stages...
It may appear to hang at a certain percent for a hour or more or even back up and go over the same area...this is normal...
DO NOT SHUT YOUR COMPUTER DOWN WHILE CHKDSK IS RUNNING OR YOU CAN HAVE SEVERE PROBLEMS
This can take several hours to complete.
When completed it will boot the system back into windows.

[123Runner]

Fat 32 has a size limitation of 32gb.
NTFS can read and write to Fat 32/ Fat 16 formats.
Fat 32/Fat 16 can not see NTFS partitions.
The SD cards and flash (USB) sticks are Fat 32 so that they will work in NTFS, Macs, and NTFS.

It probably crashed and corrupted the drive because the size limit is 32gb and the file size limit is 4gb.

Limitations

Go to

Start and then to Run
Type in Chkdsk /r Note the space between k and /
Click Enter ...It will probably ask if you want to do this on the next reboot...click Y
If the window doesn't shutdown on its own then reboot the system manually. On reboot the system will start the chkdsk operation
This one will take longer then chkdsk /f

Note... there are 5 stages...
It may appear to hang at a certain percent for a hour or more or even back up and go over the same area...this is normal...
DO NOT SHUT YOUR COMPUTER DOWN WHILE CHKDSK IS RUNNING OR YOU CAN HAVE SEVERE PROBLEMS
This can take several hours to complete.
When completed it will boot the system back into windows.

[raekah]

Thank you, I'll try this! And I'll tell you whether if it works or not!