Western Digital My Book 3TB - How To Get It To Work With XP?

[JetsetBkk]

I replaced a failing 2 TB backup disk on my XP machine with a 3 TB WD "My Book".

XP says it has found new hardware, new drive and "Ready for use".

But it's not listed in My Computer or Disk Management.

 

The "My Book" works OK on my Windows 10 machine so I could still use it as a backup of my XP machine's 2 TB drive by backing up across the LAN network, but that would be a bit slow and inconvenient.

 

Would deleting the partition and reformatting it to 2 TB make it work with XP?

I thought I'd ask before doing it. ????

 

Any suggestions welcomed.

[ThaidDown]

XP only addresses up to 2TB.

 

There appears to be a way to use but I have not tried it as do not use XP any more.

 

This might help   https://www.ghacks.net/2010/11/04/how-to-use-3tb-hard-drives-on-windows-xp/

 

[JetsetBkk]

36 minutes ago, ThaidDown said:

XP only addresses up to 2TB.

 

There appears to be a way to use but I have not tried it as do not use XP any more.

 

This might help   https://www.ghacks.net/2010/11/04/how-to-use-3tb-hard-drives-on-windows-xp/

 

That was a nice find! Unfortunately, the special driver from Paragon can be used only on internal drives and not external - such as the "My Book".

 

I've just connected the "My Book" drive to one of my Windows 10 machines and shared it as "...Backup" and given my XP machine full access, and it's backing up even as we speak! :)

 

So that means I can use all of the 3 TB, rather than try to get it to work locally attached to the XP machine with only 2 TB available. This idea has now made me re-think my entire backup strategy, i.e. why not backup all my data across the network to bigger drives rather than 5 x 2 TB drives as I'm now doing...

 

Anyway, thanks for the link.

[johng]

XP 64 Pro works for me  it can see and deal with GPT partitions

[JetsetBkk]

7 hours ago, johng said:

XP 64 Pro works for me  it can see and deal with GPT partitions

Aha! So you were the one who bought it!  Only joking.  :)

 

Yes, I know a 64 bit version exists but have never come across it or know anybody - until you - that uses it.

 

So yesterday all seemed OK on the Windows 10 machine. I'll now make another post about today's events.  ????

 

[JetsetBkk]

So, after connecting the "My Book" to my Windows 10 machine, it all worked fine yesterday, although very slowly, copying stuff across the LAN network - about 10 MB/s = 80% of the LAN speed.

 

Then today I powered up the Windows 10 machine with the "My Book" still connected and powered on, and the monitor showed the "Gigabyte" logo but wouldn't go any further. There were no beeps and the MoBo Hex display showed "b4" which means "USB device hot plug-in" according to the MoBo manual. The keyboard Num Lock key had no effect on its LED, so I don't think the keyboard was working.

 

So I powered off, unplugged the "My Book", powered up again and hit F2 to get into into Gigabyte's "UEFI DualBIOS".

 

After Googling the problem, I tried changing Storage Boot Option Control from "Legacy only" to Disabled and also Display Boot Option Control from "Legacy only" to Disabled . After powering on, the BIOS gave one long and three short beeps, the monitor was blank and did not show the Gigabyte logo, the Hex display on the MoBo showed "b4" which means "USB device hot plug-in", and about 10 seconds later it booted.

 

I restarted it again and hit the F2 key. The Hex display showed Ab - "Wait user command in BIOS setup". The monitor stayed blank and it never booted. I guess it - the BIOS - is waiting for input which I could not give. The Num Lock key had no effect on the Num Lock LED, and <ESC>, <F2> and <F10> had no effect. So I couldn't get into the BIOS to undo what I'd done. So much for the Google search results.

 

So as the machine was effectively useless, I decided to reset the CMOS. Fortunately, there's a switch for it so I followed the procedure - power off, unplug, wait a minute, push the switch. After powering up, it gave the usual (good) single beep and displayed three options. I chose "Load optimized defaults then boot" and it booted OK.

 

I restarted and went into the BIOS and noted that the Hex displays were showing "Ab" again, i.e. "Wait user command in BIOS", but this time the monitor was working and so was the keyboard.

 

So I'm back to where I was, i.e. I can't power up with the "My Book" powered up and connected. Bummer.

 

If anyone's interested and would like me to try something, I'll do it - especially as I now know the "Reset CMOS" switch should make it work again whatever I screw up.

 

[katana]

10 hours ago, johng said:

XP 64 Pro works for me  it can see and deal with GPT partitions

Hi,

How did you find driver support for that with peripherals such as printers etc?

Will it run 32 bit programs, like Win 7 64 bit can?

Edited December 21, 2018 by katana

[johng]

The only driver I haven't been able to find so far is Android ADB usb drivers....32 but programs work fine.

[KittenKong]

7 hours ago, JetsetBkk said:

So I'm back to where I was, i.e. I can't power up with the "My Book" powered up and connected.

No real surprise. It in inadvisable to do this anyway and the best answer is just to unplug it before booting. You should also safely remove and unplug it before shutting down.

 

You could also look at the BIOS boot sequence settings and see if the PC is set to boot from USB devices first, which it probably is, in which case changing the order to put the C drive first should solve it. If ever you need to do an OS repair or OS installation from a USB device you would need to put that setting back to what it was, and to disconnect the WD hard drive.

[JetsetBkk]

8 hours ago, KittenKong said:

No real surprise. It in inadvisable to do this anyway and the best answer is just to unplug it before booting. You should also safely remove and unplug it before shutting down.

 

You could also look at the BIOS boot sequence settings and see if the PC is set to boot from USB devices first, which it probably is, in which case changing the order to put the C drive first should solve it. If ever you need to do an OS repair or OS installation from a USB device you would need to put that setting back to what it was, and to disconnect the WD hard drive.

I always "Safely Remove" before powering off the PC. In fact, I changed the "Policy" in Device Properties to use write caching to increase performance, which requires that I use the "Safely Remove" method. The performance increase was about 10% - from 110 seconds per gigabyte to 100 seconds, but that is still very slow.

 

I couldn't find any obvious reference to booting from USB. There are two boot options - from the SSD (option 1) and from the DVD (option 2).

Also, under CSM Support, there were two items that I tried changing from "Legacy only" to Disabled: they were Storage Boot Option Control and Display Boot Option Control. But I did that yesterday and screwed up the BIOS, as I reported, and so had to reset the BIOS.

 

But I just found the solution!

 

In the "UEFI DualBIOS" settings, under the "Peripherals" tab there is a "Legacy USB Support" setting which I just changed from Enabled to Disabled.  Now it boots OK with the "My Book" powered on and connected.

 

The Help Text for that setting says "DISABLE option will keep USB devices available only for EFI applications." I guess that means not available for booting from, but OK for read/write operations.

 

There is a drawback, however. I use a bootable USB stick to run Acronis to make an image of the Windows 10 system that is on an SSD drive. I hit F12 after powering on to get to the BIOS Boot menu. My Acronis drive is not listed with the Legacy USB Support disabled.

 

So I have to change the "Legacy USB support" back to "Enabled" to boot the USB drive, which means I must turn off the "My Book" just for that relatively infrequent job. I store the image on the USB drive itself as it's a 64 GB drive and the images are usually about 40 GB, but if I wanted to store it on the "My Book" I couldn't.

 

I turned on the "My Book" after running up the Acronis, and it was detected by Acronis as a "Local Drive", but Acronis did not list any of the folders on it, so I think storing the image on the My Book wouldn't work. I don't want to screw anything up by trying it.

 

 

 

[KittenKong]

1 hour ago, JetsetBkk said:

The Help Text for that setting says "DISABLE option will keep USB devices available only for EFI applications." I guess that means not available for booting from, but OK for read/write operations.

....

So I have to change the "Legacy USB support" back to "Enabled" to boot the USB drive, which means I must turn off the "My Book" just for that relatively infrequent job.

Yes, that's the setting. Its location and description varies from BIOS to BIOS but the effect is much the same.

 

I dont think you will find a setting that allows you to do both.

[johng]

Just a thought but maybe the USB drive is labeled/marked as bootable but has no operating system...maybe try removing the
boot flag with some partition manager or even command line diskpart where I believe they call bootable "active"

[JetsetBkk]

6 hours ago, johng said:

Just a thought but maybe the USB drive is labeled/marked as bootable but has no operating system...maybe try removing the
boot flag with some partition manager or even command line diskpart where I believe they call bootable "active"

I had actually thought of that but couldn't remember where that "bootable" indicator is. I tried Disk Management before, and it just showed the disk as "Healthy (Primary Partition)".

 

But I just tried Disk Management again after inserting my bootable Acronis flash drive:

The bootable Acronis flash drive is "Healthy (Active, Primary Partition)"

The Windows 10 partition on the SSD is "Healthy (Boot, Page file, Crash Dump, Primary Partition)"

The XP partition on the SSD is "Healthy (System, Active, Primary Partition)"

(Just to clarify, the SSD has both XP and Windows 10 installed, making this PC dual booting)

 

So, I reckon that the ability to boot is what "Active" means and, as the My Book does not have "Active", I'm pretty sure it's not bootable.

 

So I'm now left with reformatting the My Book as NTFS and using Partition Wizard (it's on my bootable Acronis flash drive) to make the partition 1.8 TB and see what happens when I connect it to the XP PC.