External Hd Causes Bootup In Windows 7 To Hang....

I've been thinking about this since you posted this at another forum and I read it. I don't have answers just a bit to share with what happened to me and an internet friend.

I own 7 external portable hard drives. None is larger than 2 TB because I have yet to figure out if Windows 7 will "see" a hard drive larger than 2.2 TB. When I search, I get info about internal but not much on external drives. I can tell you that an internet friend bought a 3TB external hd and could not get his computer to "see" it so he returned it and got a 2TB instead. So perhaps size is a factor. You could consider partitioning the drive into two partitions and see if it is usable through File Explorer.

As I mentioned, 7 hard drives. Of the 7, one of my computers fails to boot if one drive is attached. It has no effect on the other three Windows 7 computers. They boot fine with this drive attached. This is a 2TB hard drive. I also have two other 2TB hard drives. The drives are all Western Digital. Why won't one computer boot with this attached? I have no idea. (2 of the computers are 32 bit and 2 are 64bit; the computer that freezes is a 32 bit upgraded from XP. Another computer is also 32 bit and was upgraded from XP and it will boot if the drive is attached! It makes no sense but that's how it works.) I have learned to attach it after this one computer has booted. To be usable, that's what you'll have to do. I have a note to myself, attach drive to eMachine computer, after the computer has booted. (This is either booting into Windows or booting from an Acronis True Image CD. The computer hangs and I have to shut it off).

All drives are formatted NTFS. So even if you changed the format from exFat to NTFS, there is no guarantee that this would make a difference with the computer being able to boot with the drive attached.

 

I understand why you cross posted. It is certainly acceptable if you wait a day or two and get no response at one place.
I did not respond at the other forum because I spent some time searching to see if I could find ANYTHING about a limit to the size of an external drive attached to a Windows 7 system. Personally, I chose to play it safe and only buy drives 2 TB in size. It took some looking because just like sd cards and USB sticks, finding a smaller size is getting harder and harder.

We still don't have any real answers as to a) does the size of an external drive have a limit b) is exFat better or worse than NTFS c) why some systems hang on boot with an external attached while other systems don't.

 

I'm not sure if a Windows driver would help.
At least it would do nothing for my one computer. I boot from a True Image CD which is written in linux. (The hard drive is not selected as my boot device in the menu, the CD device is). If the drive is attached, the computer freezes - there is no loading of Windows involveded so I don't need a Windows driver. Add to this the fact that the 3 other computers work fine with the drive attached. One also boots from the same CD, no freezing and the other two without optical drives boot from a boot USB stick.

When I first got the drive, I simply assumed I could never use this drive for images on the one computer. Eventually through trial and error, I determined if I allow TI to completely load into RAM, then attach the drive, the drive is seen and I can use it for images. If I attach it at any point before TI is completely loaded, the computer freezes.

 

Truthfully, I prefer Western Digital to the other brands. I own My Passport Essential 500GB, My Passport 500GB and 1TB, My Passport Ultra 1TB and 2-2Tb, and WD Elements 2TB. The WD Elements is the one that hangs on just one computer for some unknown reason.
Looks like WD still sells My Passport
https://shop.westerndigital.com/pro...wd-my-passport-usb-3-0-hdd#WDBYVG0020BRD-WESN
red is cheaper than black and blue!

See if you can find anything new, formatted NTFS (unless you need to connect it to any Apple products) and 2 TB in size. That should remove 2 of the obstacles formatting and size questions.

 

The desktop I'm typing this on is 11 years old. The refurbed Dell I purchased for my husband is about 16 years old! So no guarantee that they would recognize anything larger than 2 TB. That's why all my portable external hd (7 of them) are no larger than 2 TB. I just didn't want to chance it.