“Can this drive be used with both XP and windows operating systems? Would I have to reformat it ?”
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Xp is a windows operating system and so are windows 7 or 8 or 10 they are all windows operating system and they normally use NTFS format. If you do NTFS you can use the drive among all windows operating system.....now if you own a Mac and a Windows and want to use the same drive you might have to use third party software to use either NTSF or HSF+ (you have to pick one and find the third party app to use on the off format pc)....
Sorry, there was a problem. Please try again later.The WDBCKA0080HBK-NESN is not advertised as being Windows XP compatible, so there are no guarantees. But the drive I purchased in November 2018 was able to work with Windows XP after performing some manual steps. For reference, CrystalDiskInfo reported my drive as being a WDC WD80EMAZ-00WJTAO. The drive comes initialized with a GPT partition table. Windows XP does not support GPT, so you need to convert the drive to MBR. There are a number of different tools that can do that, but I did it using Disk Management in Windows 10. After converting the drive to MBR, it needs to be partitioned. Partitioning can be done in Windows XP Disk Management. Windows XP Disk Management will let you create one large 7.27 TB partition that fills the whole drive. Drive Management in Windows 10 for some reason will only let you create a 2 TB partition on an MBR drive, even though larger partitions are possible given the sector size. This drive has a logical and physical sector size of 4096 bytes, which is how the entire drive can be usable even as an MBR-partitioned drive in Windows XP. Older drives with 512 bytes per sector had a maximum usable size of 2 TB when partitioned in MBR.
Sorry, there was a problem. Please try again later.I was able to use the 10TB big brother of this unit with xp by using WD_Quick_Formatter_Win_1_2_0_10. Run the program from an xp system and it will format the drive as a single NTFS volume. You will need to use ExtFat32_v2.00 to format this volume to FAT32. Both of these programs can be found on WD's web site using google searches. I WAS NOT able to get this drive to format to the full size without this--I have extensive experience formatting and partitioning drives from the last 30+ years and was not able to create a partition larger than 2TB in disk management after converting from GPT to MBR in Win 7. The remaining space was unallocated and would not format even in XP. The drive will take longer to recognize once you have formatted it FAT32, so be patient as it is operating correctly. I even ran chkdsk on it to make sure.
Sorry, there was a problem. Please try again later.It's unlikely because all the hard drive manufacturers have had stopped supporting 32bit XP, Vista platform. The new scheme is GPT (GUID Partition Table) to manage the drive instead of NTSF Master Boost Record table which imposed a 2.2TB limit in size. The older drivers (2 years or older) were formatted with 4k or higher sector size and added bridges internally to overcome the windows limitation. With the GPT scheme, they can fall back to 512 or 1024 bytes sector since there is visually no limitation. To use the new GPT formatting, the Windows must be running 64bit platform i.e Windows 7, 10. For older operating system such as XP 64 bits, early released Windows 7, there is good possibility work but one needs to check whether it's running under NTSF MBR or GPT disk management scheme. To use the new GPT drive in 32bit platforms, one needs to reformat it using Windows 7 or 10 that supports GPT so it can recognize the drive and partition it into several logical drive with 2.2TB each, after that format each logical drive with NTSF formatting. If one tries to format entire drive with NTSF formatting, only the first 2.2TB is visible under windows file explorer. After formatting completion, the drive can be used in the XP or Vista and will show multiple logical drives in one physical drive.
Sorry, there was a problem. Please try again later.It's pre-formatted as NTFS, which could be support by XP and newer version windows.
Sorry, there was a problem. Please try again later.If Windows XP can't see it, you can re-format with an NTFS partition and it will work just fine.
Sorry, there was a problem. Please try again later.It is preformatted to NTFS- which should work for any windows OS.
Sorry, there was a problem. Please try again later.Ah... XP is Windows, and yes, this drive will work. It's formatted NTFS, so you're good to go.
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