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I have two computers: A laptop for work and a personal computer at home. I also have an Intenso USB 3.0 external Hard Drive keeping them in sync. Both computers have been set up by myself and should in theory be identical in terms of settings of the OS (Win 10).

All changes (i.e. saving a file) made with the laptop are persistent as they should be. When changing or creating something with the PC one of following three scenarios happen:

  1. Everything works as it should.
  2. The new/changed file is not to be found.
  3. The new/changed file is to be found, but corrupted [In one particular instance I had an Excel File corrupted but opening it with Open Office revealed that somehow there was the text of a received e-Mail in it]

As long as I work only with the PC everything is fine, but as soon as I dismount the hard drive and connect it with my Laptop, the laptop tells me that the hard drive is corrupted and has to be repaired. Chkdsk fixes this but only until I change computers again.

So far I have tried:

  • Buying a new hard drive of the same type. Both hard drives show the same symptoms.
  • Always dismounting the hard drive before unplugging. This does not always work.

    -> Dismounting the hard drive via USB Safely Remove

    -> Setting the hard drive to offline per diskmgmt.msc

    -> Shutting down the PC and unplugging the drive from the powered down computer.

    -> Restarting the PC and after that shutting it down / dismounting the drive.

The problem persists even when Windows and/or "USB Safely Remove" tell me, that I can safely remove the disk. Plugging it into the laptop means that the new data is probably lost [I haven't conducted a detailed study yet, but no obvious causal link springs to mind, except that only data changed or created by the PC has a chance to be effected].

Any suggestions are highly welcome.

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  • I have seen this problem between two computers, even with Win8.1, most frequently between an oscilloscope and office laptop. My suspicion was that there is some screw-up in setting of goofy partitions/permissions, some inconsistency in "security". I'd love to see explanations from Windows software professionals. Jan 27, 2017 at 18:31

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