I had a USB Thumb drive 64GB and a USB External drive 5TB, somehow I managed to stuff them up on MS Windows. I tried many ways to fix them, the Thumb drive simply did not show up at all. Even as Administrator on Windows I could not fix the directory I had stuffed on the External drive.
I wondered if they would do the same on a Raspberry Pi; both drives are now fixed and working on Windows. Gparted fixed the Thumb drive and the External drive was fixed with File Manager.
One would think MS Windows would be able to do the same, obviously not. Another case of Linux out performing Windows.
I really do my best not to do the whole OS v OS thing, I kinda think they all have their place, strengths and weakness; just some users for what they do may not notice the weakness so “its the best”.
that aside, often in windows the drive MUST by setup for what it expects. with usb drives that don’t show up often you will see it in windows “disk manager” from where you can remove and re-add the needed partitions.
@Michael99645 Yes OS vs OS agree should not really compare.
I was about to throw the 64GB USB Thumb drive away as it did not show up in “Disk Manager” or when plugged into any USB port. It was not very old and had little use.
I was happy when it did show up as a Raspberry Pi USB device and I could use Gparted to repartition it and it now works with Windows. (I hate throwing stuff away)
The USB External drive problem was that a folder was created in one of the Windows System only folders, accidently. And I was unable to remove it or change its properties to remove it. The Raspberry Pi had no problem removing the folder.
For me it shows the usefulness of the Raspberry Pi and Linux.
Many years ago I managed to kill a Windows drive by trying to get it to boot from too many partitions. Now I wonder if the Raspberry Pi may have been able to fix that drive. The drive is long gone as “Disk Manager” could not repartition it.
My post is really aimed at “how amazing is the Raspberry Pi”, it will never replace my main PC but it is so useful for other things where a PC would be too large and an overkill.
chkdsk and Disk Management are okay for simple issues, but they can fail if the partition table or boot record is badly corrupted. Linux, on the other hand, doesn’t care what OS created the file system—it just tries to interpret it and repair it.
Thanks for sharing this experience, it’s a good reminder that having access to multiple tools and approaches can make all the difference. At least that’s what I tell myself, so I don’t end up throwing hardware out too quickly.
I really do my best not to do the whole OS v OS thing, I kinda think they all have their place, strengths and weakness; just some users for what they do may not notice the weakness so “its the best”.
