USB HDD Windows 10 to Windows 7 incompatibility

Okay. This is an unusual problem, but I hope I'm not alone with this. If I decide to copy files to an external USB HDD or stick using Windows 10, then plug that into a PC running Windows 7, a lot of time I find that the files I have just copied are not visible. When plugging it back into the Windows 10 PC that was originally used to copy the files with, the files are gone from the external drive. Like, they had never been copied to the drive in the first place.

From experience, I've found that "safely ejecting" the drive before unplugging it after the initial copy on the Windows 10 PC does increase the chances of the files being present when transferring to a Windows 7 PC. I have had this issue with multiple PCs running Windows 10 and Windows 7, so it's not just some freaky thing going on between my two PCs alone.

So, yeah. What the hell? :P

Try this:
After you copy from the computer to the external USB HDD or stick using Windows 10, safely eject.
Then remove and insert it back. Open the folder with the files you just copied. Are they there? Right click and select open. Does it open?

Yep. When safely ejecting an external HDD or USB stick from a Windows 10 PC, the files are still present and typically still work when plugging it into a Windows 7 PC also. When not safely ejecting from a Windows 10 PC and plugging it back into the same PC, the files are always still present also. It's like plugging it into the Windows 7 PC afterwards is what causes the files to disappear. Seems very unusual. Outside of cross OS PC use, the files are always present.

You should always use the safely eject feature to remove a USB storage medium like a thumb drive or SD card, etc. The reason is due to the OS still reading and writing to the drive and if you pull the drive out without using the safely remove feature you could corrupt the contents of the drive.

From what I read you say it "typically" works from 10 to 7? Are you implying it typically works only if you use the safely eject feature? If so, there's your answer right there.

If files still don't show up after using the safely eject feature in 10, then perhaps it's the drive's file format. If it's formatted to NTFS try FAT32. If it's FAT32 try NTFS. The thing with FAT32 though is that you can't write very large files to a hard drive with that type of format. I can't remember what FAT32's limit was but it may have been up to 2 GB per file.

Absent of all that I actually don't know other to speculate on chipset incompatibility between motherboard's or something. The really cheap USB thumb drives can and will give you all sorts of issues. I've seen thumb drives on eBay that advertise an ungodly amount of space only to be sold dirt cheap. These Chinese knock offs probably can claim this amount of storage with compression that's being done on the chip inside the USB stick I'm sure. So in reality the USB stick's storage capacity may be some 15 GB, but they advertise these things as 128 GB or something far out there. And USB sticks with a chipset like that will undoubtedly have potential issues with a computer.

Do you have another USB stick preferably another brand you can test with if this issue is not the safely eject feature causing it? If you use the safely eject feature and it works then that's the source of the issue.

Kreeep said:

Okay. This is an unusual problem, but I hope I'm not alone with this. If I decide to copy files to an external USB HDD or stick using Windows 10, then plug that into a PC running Windows 7, a lot of time I find that the files I have just copied are not visible....

If the USBs are formatted as ntfs then this may be due to permissions. On the W10 machine after copying the files, try setting the permissions for the folder where you copied them to Everyone: Full Control.

Oh, you never know. You might be right. It could very well be a strange permissions issue with Windows 10. Also, as a workaround to at least reduce the likelihood of it occurring as frequently, I'll be sure to safely eject from now on. Thanks guys :)

Kreeep said:

Oh, you never know. You might be right. It could very well be a strange permissions issue with Windows 10. Also, as a workaround to at least reduce the likelihood of it occurring as frequently, I'll be sure to safely eject from now on. Thanks guys :)

In Windows 7 if you go to device properties for the USB drive, under Policies you can optimize it for "quick removal" or "better performance". The second enables write caching, which means data is kept in cache and written down in one big write instead of many small ones. This might very slightly increase drive lifespan, but it also means if you don't safely remove it, data kept in the queue for this next big write will be lost.

My guess is that your Win7 has set the USB drive to "quick removal" (which is the default setting in Win7), while your Win10 has goofed and set it to whatever it calls the enabled write caching setting.

In Win7 this setting is in Control Panel > Devices and Printers > (select your USB drive, right click > Properties) > Hardware tab > (select the one that doesn't have a generic name) > Properties > General tab > Change settings > Policies tab. It's probably the same in Win10, if not you might want to ask in a Win10 forum.

It's a good idea to always use safely remove, even if write caching is disabled. The system could be writing something to the drive in the background, and if you pull out the drive unexpectedly you could still corrupt the file system.