XP cannot access other drive with Windows 7 dual boot

I've got a bit of a perplexing problem here that I hope somebody can provide some insight on. Set up the dual boot with your (very awesome) tutorial and everything works perfectly there. Windows 7 was installed first to the C: drive, XP is on an E: partition of the same drive. The D: drive is a second physical drive that is just used for file storage. If it matters, both physical drives are paired drives in Raid1.

The problem comes when I've loaded into Windows XP, I can't access the D:\ storage drive. It reads as size 0, and can't be formatted or read.

Under Windows 7, everything works. I can access the storage drive fine and have no problems using it.

I originally thought it was a permissions thing because the D:\ drive was formatted in Win7, but in XP I can read from the win7 C:\ drive just fine.

I am at a loss, can anybody offer any suggestions as to why the drive would read fine under 7 but not when in XP?

NinjaPirate said:

I've got a bit of a perplexing problem here that I hope somebody can provide some insight on. Set up the dual boot with your (very awesome) tutorial and everything works perfectly there. Windows 7 was installed first to the C: drive, XP is on an E: partition of the same drive. The D: drive is a second physical drive that is just used for file storage. If it matters, both physical drives are paired drives in Raid1.

The problem comes when I've loaded into Windows XP, I can't access the D:\ storage drive. It reads as size 0, and can't be formatted or read.

Under Windows 7, everything works. I can access the storage drive fine and have no problems using it.

I originally thought it was a permissions thing because the D:\ drive was formatted in Win7, but in XP I can read from the win7 C:\ drive just fine.

I am at a loss, can anybody offer any suggestions as to why the drive would read fine under 7 but not when in XP?

Hi NP and welcome

I assume the drive is NTFS. what are the permssions like. since the HDhas been in two OS maybe the inherited rights are different.

Not much help sorry

Ken J+

I spent the better part of the day banging my head against the wall on this, then I came here and made the post and went to lunch. I think the bit of time off away from the problem helped, because I came back with a solution.

I completely deleted the partition on that storage drive from in Win7, then loaded up XP and formatted it there. After doing that both Win7 and WinXP were able to access the drive fine.

Not sure what the actual issue was as there was nothing special about the original format (default NTFS), but at least now there is a fix on record for anybody else unlucky enough to have the same random issue.

I noticed in your previous post, you write that you used Win7 to create the partition and had XP format the partition.

If you have not done so, recreate the partition using XP - not Windows7.

Good luck.

I had a similar issue using a third hard drive mutually between Xp Pro SP3 and Windows 7 Ultimate, both OS's 64-bit. The first drive had only Windows XP, the second drive had only Windows 7. Both OS's used the third drive successfully, but the files and folders were listed separately.
In explorer I would find all the folders and files created by Windows XP, then all the folders and files created by Windows 7.

It may not seem like a problem, but before I realized what was happening, I thought I had a serious issue. I couldn't find some files and folders I had just created.

I didn't find the answer but I believe it's a similar issue. So I'm hoping to learn the answer.

Johnson said:

I noticed in your previous post, you write that you used Win7 to create the partition and had XP format the partition.

If you have not done so, recreate the partition using XP - not Windows7.

Good luck.

Tried that, result is the same.