Hi, have you tried checking with CheckDiskGUI? It shows a flag called DirtyBit. When that flag is shown as Dirty on a boot drive for example, it is what triggers a chkdsk at boot time. I don't know if you can do a boot time check on a external drive, but you might wanna try it to see if that flag is always being set and if its that what makes windows always ask for a new chkdsk scan.
Hi, hushkamala, I've tried CheckDiskGUI. (On both systems) Never seen it before, but I always like small useful programs that don't need a lot of installing And... You were right! It does flag the drive as "DirtyBit". Of course when I scan & fix the drive, it's shown as "clean" after that. (althought after this repair I'm told by Windows that there were "no errors found") But when I connect the drive to the other machine (so I switch between W7 and W10 (20H2) or vice versa), it is shown "dirty" on that one too. Again, if I fix the drive, it's shown "clean" by CheckDiskGUI. If I don't scan and fix the drive, it keeps being judged as "dirty" on both machines. So, repairing the drive on one machine, makes it "dirty" to the other one. Once it's considered "clean" on one PC, I can connect and disconnect as often as I want on THAT system, but as soon as I connect it to the other PC, i get the "scan and fix" warning again. So, since every disk seems to be functioning fine (without "fixing" it") the question is: How important is this DirtyBit flag? Is it just there to scare people? And (only if it's really not important) should there be a way to make Windows look the other way and ignore it ?
I've thought about uninstalling all of them as well, but since I've got this issue with a new disk as well (that was'n previously installed) I'm not sure that will work. But I might give it a try. I've also thought about moving everything to the ExFat format. Tried one disk with ExFat, that works fine, no warnings. But I've got no experience with that format. Never used it before. It would be quite a job copying everyhing, but at the moment I have to stay at home anyway for the next few weeks.... Any disadvantage or reason not to use ExFat? Using ExFat will also make things easier when I finally decide to ditch windows one day It's a shame that all versions of Windows 10 reach end of life so soon. That's not exactly what we were promissed when Windows 10 was introduced. Otherwise I would just keep using 1909.
Can't say if ExFat would be better because i also never used it before. But if you're ditching windows maybe also ditch their file systems... If its just storage its a solution that will work on both windows and linux, and if does not give you warnings, try it. So many new windows versions and even ntfs is not working as it should for you. I don't even know if ntfs in windows 7 is the same as windows 10, maybe that's whats causing the warning when you connect it to windows 7. But i have internal hdds from windows 7 still in mbr working in my system. Its windows doing its thing eheh. I don't have problems with my disks, but there's others, like windows update that doesn't like me to update to a new major release making me use the assistant every time.
I have reformatted one of the disks with every partition program that has been on the market since Napoleon! The only thing that's clear to me is that it is definitely a NTFS problem. Next thing I will try, is to put the internal (second) drive from one machine into the other. I'm still thinking about switching to ExFat as well. I never had trouble using the original FAT32 for storage. Except of course it's size limit, that when files got bigger pushed me towards NTFS a few years ago. Anybody can think of a good reason not to use ExFat? Better to ask, than regret it later....
I've been using exfat for 10 years on external storage to RW data across OSes, or for microsd cards in phones, even my tv reads exfat
Done some further studying, and decided to switch to exFat. I've played a little with one disk and it's all going smoothly. Can't say that copying or response time is any slower than NTFS. A lot of what I have on older disks is still FAT32 anyway, so I have to copy those only once. So it isn't such a big operation after all. Also bought 3 new 4TB externals for a good "Black Friday" price. I therefore might keep some of the NTFS disks as well (keep them in my mothers house, just in case). Better to have one copy too much than one too little. Thanks for all the advice and helping me think. All we have to do now, is wait for Microsoft to publish and clear this NTFS bug. That will probably happen as soon as I'm done copying....
Since the latest Windows 10 Update (KB4601319) this problem has now disappeared. Every NTFS disk is now compatible to both Windows 10 (20H2) and Windows 7. (without chckdsk complaining, or messing up things...) In the meantime I have switched most external disk to exFAT, which turned out to be quite reliable sofar.