Thread: For the tech savvy

So - I work equally between home and work at the moment. To solve this I bought a decent external hard drive. The problem is, that when I load files on the the hard drive from the work computer to work on at home - they are not found when I plug it into the home computer. When I take the drive back to work and plug into the work computer- there they are!

Any ideas? Because this is starting to bug the hell out of me.

Originally Posted by nidhogg

So - I work equally between home and work at the moment. To solve this I bought a decent external hard drive. The problem is, that when I load files on the the hard drive from the work computer to work on at home - they are not found when I plug it into the home computer. When I take the drive back to work and plug into the work computer- there they are!

Any ideas? Because this is starting to bug the hell out of me.

I am not tech savvy at all.

Buy some fish and dig a pond, or get some pigs.

Originally Posted by nidhogg

they are not found when I plug it into the home computer. When I take the drive back to work and plug into the work computer- there they are!

Are you sure that they are the same drives? You could be getting confused by the drive letter as it will most likely not be the same on the two PCs. You need to confirm the device information in windows to be sure.

^ what snubby said

Are the two computers both running the same operating system...windows for instance?

Yes, it might show up as G Drive on the work computer.

But then be F Drive on the home computer.


Hopefully that's it, because that is by far the easiest 'fix'.


Plugging it into a third computer, a kid's laptop or whatever may also help to understand the issue as it will either show or not show.

Assuming same OS and/or compatble file system setup on the hdd, it could be a power issue. USB connection? USB 2.0 or 3.0? Unstable or not enough power can lead to this problem. Or at least, that has happened to me in the past.

Thanks guys. To add, same operating system on both computers (windows). Probably different versions. I can see the external hard drive on the home computer - just not the new files I uploaded from the work computer.

Originally Posted by nidhogg

I can see the external hard drive on the home computer - just not the new files I uploaded from the work computer.

As I said above, you most likely loaded them onto another drive. I have worked in IT/Tech for many years and I can tell you that this is a common occurrence.

Just to further note - I do NOT get the same problem if files are transferred to a thumb drive.

Originally Posted by bsnub

As I said above, you most likely loaded them onto another drive. .

Not likely as they are there (exactly the same place) when I re-attach the external dive to the work computer.

Originally Posted by nidhogg

Not likely as they are there (exactly the same place) when I re-attach the external dive to the work computer.

Have you confirmed that you are looking at the same hard drive and not referencing the drive letter on your home PC?

2 small tests to do.

Plug it into another computer/laptop at home.

Transfer lots of different files onto it - jpegs, PDFs, MS word, mpegs etc etc and see if all, none, or some of them show up.

Have you checked your drivers are up to date?

What make and model is this "decent external hard drive"?

And have you ever formatted it on either machine?

Ok. Appreciate the suggestions, but I don't think we are there yet.

Give me a couple of days and I will post up photos of the drive plugged into the two computers.

Will take a couple of days to sanitize the images so I do not get all you buggers dropping round for a cup of tea.

Originally Posted by nidhogg

Ok. Appreciate the suggestions, but I don't think we are there yet.

FFS, have you asked your kids or wife for help? If you don't have kids at home, get your wife to ask a kid.

cant you just use cloud storage? like one drive etc

Originally Posted by malmomike77

cant you just use cloud storage? like one drive etc

That is what he should be using, but hey this is TD and not connected to the modern world.

1. Click on "Start" and select "Control Panel"
2. Open "Folder Options"
3. Click on the "View" tab
4. Tick or select " Show hidden files, folders and drives"
5. Click on "Apply"
6. Click on "Ok"
All the invisible folders should now be visible

see if that helps

As always, listen to Baldrick.


For word/pdf files I always just use Google drive.

3 home computers, me phone and 2 tablets automatically connect to it. Can share folders with others. Apparently has a 15GB limit on the free version, which with only word/pdf files and not videos etc, it still hasn't reached.

Originally Posted by malmomike77

cant you just use cloud storage? like one drive etc

Many people seem to forget that I work for a living. The amount of files on my external hard drive is slightly over 300GB.

Not sure a 20GB cloud account is gonna be that much help.

^ Nid, I'm not tech savvy but have other people set stuff up for me and then follow their instructions. If I was to do any work from home, I'd log into a pc in an office in Norway using a remote desktop. This means that I wouldn't have to carry around hard drives full of files and also would give access to any software/dongles etc that I would need. Some of the data files I could work on may be tens of GB in size, and a project may include many of them.

I would also have access to the entire company network if I needed anything else during a project. And there would be the advantage that I'd not be creating duplicate files separate from those stored on the company network.

I also wouldn't need a fancy computer, just a laptop connected to decent monitors at home and a half decent internet connection, easy enough in Thailand, as all the power woyld come from the company pc.

Maybe talk to your IT dept and set up something like that?

Originally Posted by nidhogg

Many people seem to forget that I work for a living. The amount of files on my external hard drive is slightly over 300GB.

Not sure a 20GB cloud account is gonna be that much help.

You can get a Microsoft 365 family subscription for ฿2,899.00 per year which gives you Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote etc. plus up to five OneDrive accounts with each having 1TB of cloud storage. I was using DropBox when I was working, but 365 with OneDrive is cheaper plus you get the Microsoft programmes.

^ I use that Microsoft 365 for the family Barty and I think it's great.

One thing.... i tried the MS One Drive as well, but it gave the daughter (on the MS 365) access to all my documents and files which I don't want, so I logged out of that. I still haven't worked out how to limit access for other members on the 365 subsciption.