External hard drive problem [View all]

Hi, I have an old Dell desktop in the basement that is still hooked up to my scanner printer. The desk computer is so old, Google Chrome won't let me onto the Internet with it.

I still use it to scan pictures. I have a WD external hard drive that I plug into the USB. I can transfer the pictures to the hard drive, then bring it upstairs and transfer them to my Dell laptop and work on them. Or I could.

Yesterday, I scanned 34 pictures and copied them to the hard drive. I checked on the old computer and they were there and visible.

I came upstairs and tried to transfer the pictures to my laptop. The transfer didn't work. Only 9 of the pictures were visible, the rest had an Irfanview icon and the name I had typed. I went back down and transferred the pictures again into a new folder, checked to be sure they had copied, and tried again to get them to the laptop. I kept getting error messages that the hard drive wasn't responding. I ended up transferring them from the ext. hard drive to my phone and from my phone to the laptop, using the phone charger for the last step of the transfer.

I can't figure out why the hard drive is working with the old desk computer, but not the newer laptop. I used the USB cord from desk to HD, and from HD to phone.

Today, I saw that there were some tools handy for the HD, and tried to use them, but got error messages for the defrag and error repair.

Less than 1/2 of the HD has been used. I'm wondering if I should just back-up the WD harddrive to the other larger ext. HD I have in case it is going bad. Or if I should update drivers on the laptop. Until yesterday, my transfer system was working fine.

I know I need to change a bunch of things, but haven't. Almost everything is wireless. This just got overlooked. Thanks for any insights