Why can my external hard drive open on my laptop and not my computer?
I had a laptop since 2012 and last year I bought an external hard drive to backup files.
I got a brand new computer several weeks ago and I want to transfer my laptop files to the computer. Doing it by USB is a pain in the ass.
So since my external hard drive has a copy of everything already, I just want to copy and paste all that stuff directly into my new computer.
But now my new computer apparently can’t open the external hard drive.
I looked at it in the disk manager. It pops up as “Disk 1” and “Unknown” and there’s some issue where the external hard drive is “Unallocated”. I can’t initialize it because when I try to this error pops up:
“Data error: (cyclic redundancy check)”
I searched solutions and read to try using the command prompt but all I get is “Cannot open volume for direct access”
The external drive isn’t damaged or anything. I can still open it on my laptop and it’s fine there.
I’m starting to really lose patience here.
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5 Answers
Hard to answer when you don’t mention which operating system you are using. If you’re using Windows it’s probably a network problem. Everything that is external to your computer needs to be allowed access. You can do that through the network settings in Control Panel. Click the diagnose problems link, it may be enough to solve your problem.
Is it a Windows 8 computer? It took me literally 2 days to remove all the crap that prevented the new pc from being productive.
The best free program I found is called Start8
It makes Windows 8 look and act like 7.
Once you have that going, you can plug in external drives and make them compatible..
Just off the info you said, I would say it is a different in filing systems. Way back when, I was upgrading from Windows 98 2nd Ed. To Win XP, if the files were 32 bit, some would not open because I was running NTFS with XP. The laptop being older might have the filing system in place as the external hard drive. Other than that, the drivers that run the external hard drive don’t match or is not recognized by your newer laptop and Win 8.
I actually found out and feel stupid now.
My external hard drive is a Toshiba. Whenever I plug it into my laptop, I have to put in a password that I set. The issue was that my new computer didn’t have the Toshiba password protection tool. Without it, the computer didn’t know how to open the drive. So I had to install the program from the Internet in order for my computer to open the external hard drive.
So I’m all good. But thanks everyone.
@ScottyMcGeester
It’s always something simple. Don’t feel stupid.
The trick is always discovering which simple thing is the one fucking you up!
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