Weird Win7 issue

[Calzor Suzay]

I have a 2.5" 160GB drive which I can place in my external eSATA dock and Win7 finds it and adds it, I need to run FAT32 on it so create for example a 10gb partition and format it FAT32 within Win7, I've also tried 3rd party apps that make the partition 160GB and format it FAT32 it makes no odds which method.

The problem is I copy files to it etc and it doesn't complain. Remove disk, re insert it later on and everything on it will have vanished like I never did it, it does seem I can create a folder and it will stay there, the files I've tried copying are not large, at most 40mb.

If I repeat the same but with NTFS it's fine and files stay so what's going on?
If I mount the disk on the iPad which is what I intended to use it for it recognises it and I can copy files from the system to the HDD and they show up in Win7 just not when I do it in Win7.

What's going on?

 

[Calzor Suzay]

No one?

 

[Mark Phelps]

When you "remove" the eSATA drive, are you just unplugging it? Or are you going through "safe removal" first?

I'm guessing the first, which if that is true, means that you have buffered writes that have not yet finished when you unplug the drive.

But, if you're doing the second, I don't know what the problem could be as that is supposed to ensure that all buffered writes complete before it tells you it's OK to remove the drive.

 

[Calzor Suzay]

How long does it leave them in the buffer then?
I've left it 10 minutes before with the same result but I can't see a way of removing the drive besides pulling it out of the dock or powering the dock off. It doesn't get a 'safely remove hardware' option like USB devices.

 

[Mark Phelps]

Having not even been able to get eSata to work on my box, I would have to guess that there would an icon in the notification box you would click, like the USB icon, to then safely remove the drive.

 

[Calzor Suzay]

Nope no icon like with USB devices, it would be a bit like ejecting your C: drive