Other Help Topics :: External usb hard drive
NTFS: Full backwards compatibility, and it only affects the earlier versions of Windows from being able to access features in the newer versions and not the other way around. I have no problems accessing my NT partitions from XP, but I've had some minor issues accessing XP partitions from NT (though I've not encountered issues I haven't been able to work around).
USB Issue: I don't know what he's done, but I have it a hunch the problem is on the USB side and probably related to not properly unmounting before disconnecting or otherwise not properly shutting down. If that's the case, reinstalling isn't going to fix it.
I don't know why people jump to reinstalling something instead of figuring out what the real problem is and recovering from it. Reinstallation insures data loss, not system recovery. That's why reinstallation should be an absolute last resort. And if he's been reinstalling repeatedly like he said, maybe that's part of the problem -- either he has hardware issues that need to be resolved or he needs to learn how to properly use his software (Windows is a very capable and robust OS regardless of what people want to disparage Microsoft about) to reduce these kinds of issues.
Well the truth is that it is not xp really. It is my fault for not setting a restore point but I removed that in the beginning. I rolled my own and have been doing so for over a year. It was a very very very modified version I had on my laptop. This was my test computer where I could play with things etc.
It was also my fault that the drives were not shut down properly. I knew that I had done a bunch of changes that made it buggy..... turning it's self off without warning. I was going to reinstall XP and give this laptop to my daughter to take with her to college. I should have transfer all the files off of it...which I did....then reinstall a nice xp for her. Instead I decide to go through all of the files etc that I had on different drives...get rid of ones I did not need ... old out dated programs etc. and clean out all the drives and try to get everything in two drives... one for music, one for programs etc.
Of course in the middle of doing this it took a dump. So all the external drives got shut down in the middle of things. That is the reason that DSL can not see them. Otherwise there would be no problem. I have several hdd fix it programs but none seem to work.
What I hoped was that DSL would be able to see them and I could transfer them to a new drive. Then I was in hopes of reformatting the old drive and making it good once more.
I know there must be away to do this. I was hoping that some one might know how to do it.:)
I know now that this is not a DSL problem now. I know also it is not a ntfs problem. It is a big problem for me though. 
Thanks, Ron
If you are ready to give up, formatting is easy..
But to fight: to get more info, open Aterm and plug one of the non-working drives in. Then type dmesg and post the ~10 last messages.
In them you can see if anything can be done easily...
How do I copy it so I can post?
This is what it said:
FAT: Did not find valid FSINFO signature.
Found signature1 0x4e0005 signature2 0xc6e8000 sector=1.
VFS: Can't find a valid FAT filesystem on dev 08:01.
NTFS: Invalid $mft record zero.
Fat: Did not find valid FSINFO signature.
Found signature1 0x4e0005 signature2 0xd6e8000 sector=1.
VFS: Can't find a valid FAT filesystem on dev 03:01.
Fat: Did not find valid FSINFO signature.
Found signature1 0x4e0005 signature2 0xd6e8000 sector=1.
VFS: Can't find a valid FAT filesystem on dev 03:01.
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