Filenames show as corrupted on external drive on ONE pc

[Andy_P2002]

Hi, today's little problem sent to keep me from sleeping, is this:

I have an external Western Digital "Passport" 250GB drive which I use for important backups.

In the last two days when connected (via USB) to my normal XP desktop some of the file and folder names have started to show as complete garbage in Windows Explorer. The files are inaccessible (presumably because Windows can't work out what to do with them)..

It seems to affect one or more branches of the folder tree, so that for example one folder and all its sub-folders and files may be affected, but the next time it's a different branch or branches.
Other times it's fine.
I can still write new files to it.

If I do a chkdsk, it finds all sorts of unrecoverable files etc.

However, if I mount the same drive on my XP laptop, the disk is perfectly normal and readable.

No other drive on the desktop Pc is affected this way, neither are any USB memory sticks I've tried on it.

So is the problem with the drive or the PC? Is it even a hardware problem? And what might be the first steps to stopping it happening please?

Common sense tells me I should be backing up this drive somewhere else anyway, but buying another big drive is not an option just now.

 

[alow]

I would say the first place to start is to make sure that your Chipset, USB, and drivers for the external drive on the problem computer are all up to date. Might as well look for any other drivers/BIOS updates while you're at it.