Dave-H

Thanks both. Yes, that System Properties option is actually mentioned in the article that @jaclaz linked to. I tried using it, made absolutely no difference. I couldn't find the GPEDIT option mentioned in the article, it doesn't seem to exist on my system. The nearest I found was this - It also made absolutely no difference, the wretched warning message still pops up! I guess it's because there are actually 'alien' files on the system transplanted from a different OS. When prompted whether I want to overwrite the 'alien' disk.sys file or not, the file it's offering to replace it with is a temporary file in the system32/drivers folder. This has a temporary name, and presumably it's renamed to disk.sys when it's copied. Where is the system getting this file from? Presumably there's some hidden system files database somewhere. If I can change the file there to the Server 2003 one, would that stop the replacement offer?

Thanks, but does the Driver Signature Enforcement Overrider work on XP? All the documentation says Vista minimum. Is it actually a signature problem anyway? XP is just saying that the Server 2003 disk.sys file can't be verified to work with XP. Drivers which are just unsigned are not normally a problem, you can override that, and it's remembered, this isn't being remembered.

@Andalu @jaclaz Back again! I'm still getting this annoying pop-up whenever I mount one of the eSATA connected disks. I thought I had managed to get rid of it, but sadly not. I assume it's coming up because the disk.sys file was changed to the Server 2003 version, which the system thinks isn't compatible with XP. If I go ahead and install the driver it asks if I want to overwrite the newer disk.sys file, and I thought that if I said 'no' that would be it, but it's obviously not being remembered as I'm having to do it every time I mount the disk, and this is happening with both the disk connected to the Asmedia card and the one connected to the Silicon Image card. If the disks are already powered up and connected at boot time, it's fine, I don't see the pop-up, it only happens if I 'add' them while XP is running. Is there any way of stopping this happening?

OK, I think I'm happy with the configuration that I've now got. Sadly it doesn't include the Syba board, which has turned out to be rather a waste of money, but I will stick it in the loft for possible future use! If it can't coexist with the Asmedia board, then it's no use. I did try it along with the original PCI-E Silicon Image board, and that worked fine, but that's no good of course. What the problem is I can only guess at, it looks like some sort of resource conflict in the BIOS, but as the cards are on different buses, and moving the Syba card around to different slots made no difference, it's a bit puzzling. I can't move the Asmedia card, as it's in the only slot it can use. Anyway! I now have the original Silicon Image card back in, the Blu-ray drive is now connected directly to the motherboard, which is better for recovery operations anyway, and the eSATA card has the fixed archive drive and the removable internal caddy drive connected to it. The Asmedia card now only has the backup drive external enclosure connected to it. I will carry on using it in that configuration and see how it goes. Obsessively running chkdsk all the time might be not the thing to do. I will carry on using it as it is, and not worry unless and until I find I'm getting errors reported when backing up, or chkdsk starts running automatically because there are errors. Sorry this has been so long-winded, and drifted off-topic, and thanks everyone, especially @Andalu and @jaclaz for all the help, much appreciated! I will come back if (when) I start getting problems! Cheers, Dave.

Thanks, but there's nothing even resembling that setting in my BIOS. I have a server motherboard, so maybe they don't have such options there as they are more critical of correct configuration and resource usage and sharing. Thanks both, but I've now put the machine pretty much back as it was before, and restored a copy of the registry from before this happened. It still said it was unactivated, but when I tried a manual online activation again, this time it worked! Having had to go through the tedious business of reactivating Office on the phone when I changed my motherboard, I was very grateful not to have to go through that again!

Thanks again @Andalu and @jaclaz ! I'll say straight away that the following is now off-topic, as it's nothing directly to do with using a GPT disk in Windows XP. It has come about because of trying to do this, though. As a moderator I should set an example of good forum discipline of course, but I hope you will indulge me. Should it lead to a lengthy off-topic discussion, I will break it off into a new thread. As I said, the Syba card arrived today. I put it in the machine in place of the Silicon Image eSATA card I've been using for many years, and connected the internal archive drive and the Blu-ray drive to it. My first disappointment was that although both devices were apparently detected correctly, there was still no sign of the Blu-ray drive being available as a boot device in the BIOS. That I can live with, but there were two far more serious problems. The first, and most serious, was that the machine would no longer boot! It showed the BIOS screens of the two cards, first the Syba one, then the Asmedia one, and then just hung and won't go any further. If I removed the Asmedia card, it booted fine! If I put the Silicon Image PCI-E card in place of the Asmedia card, it boots fine. It won't boot with the Asmedia card and the Syba card in place, though. I've tried moving the Syba card to different PCI slots, and it makes no difference, the motherboard just hangs if both it and the Asmedia card are present. I then did boot up without the Asmedia card in place, and installed the Syba drivers for XP, which worked fine. I then went into Windows 10 and that found a driver and it worked fine. I then tried to go into Windows 98, and it wouldn't boot. It goes past the splash screen, but then instead of going to the desktop, it just sits there on a flashing cursor and then reboots. It will go into Safe Mode, and I used that to remove the old Silicon Image card from Device Manager, as I thought that might be causing the problem. No difference, it still reboots instead of loading the desktop. So, all in all, a bit of a disaster today! I've wasted quite a bit of money if I can't use that Syba card, but I didn't anticipate any of this of course. Just to add insult to injury, my Windows XP is now unactivated because I changed the hardware! I've put everything back as it was before, and it's still unactivated. Activation over the internet no longer works of course! Oh dear.

Wow, that is an amazing thing!

Thanks @Andalu ! Sorry, I did understand your suggestion before, it just seemed a bit of a long-winded thing to have to do. You're saying that I should use the Asmedia driver on the on-board Intel SATA ports? As the drives all work fine connected to them as they are, I guess this is just to determine whether the problem is with the Asmedia card itself or with its drivers? As I said, I've now installed a different Asmedia driver for the card, both on XP and 10, and it made no difference on either. That would seem to indicate that it must be the card, it just 'doesn't like' those disks for some reason. I made the 500GB disk as much like the 3TB disk as possible, making it a GPT disk, putting a single primary NTFS partition on it, and it's even a disk from the same Seagate Barracuda series as the 3TB disk. The two disks couldn't have been any more similar, apart from the capacity. The 500GB disk produces constant controller errors on writing (not on reading it seems) the 3TB disk doesn't. Apart from the 500GB disk being faulty, which I'm pretty confident that it isn't, I can think of no explanation for that at all. Anyway, I don't want to actually use the 500GB disk, so it's not really a problem. The important thing is that the 3TB disk works properly, but I just don't like 'unexplained' problems like that!

Thanks @D.Draker and @jaclaz ! I do need a PCI (not PCI-E) card with Windows 98 drivers to replace my Silicon Image card, but good to know what's available. My Syba card has now arrived, I'll let you know how I get on with it!

Oops, yes I must be going blind, it has indeed got two internal SATA ports! If the card I've ordered is successful, I might well buy that one as a spare! Thanks for the heads-up.

Thanks, but that card on eBay doesn't have two internal SATA ports on the card, which is what I want. One of them is an external port. I'm pretty sure that the Vantec ST300 Silicon Image based eSATA card that I was using before is only SATA 1 too, so I won't notice any difference! I'll let you know how I get on when the card arrives, hopefully later today. Cheers, Dave.

Another update. I've now updated the drivers for the Asmedia card, to version 3.2.0.0 on XP, and 3.2.3.0 on Windows 10. As you say @Andalu the drive now no longer appears in the 'safely remove hardware' applet, although the Blu-ray drive still does appear. That's not really an issue, as I can still use 'HotSwap!' to 'eject' the drive. I've got a card coming hopefully tomorrow to replace the Silicon Image eSATA card I was using for the backup drive before, and for the internal archive drive. It's one of these, and it's costing me a bomb to get it shipped from the States, but I hope it will give me two internal SATA connections that I can use for the Blu-ray drive and the internal archive drive. It claims to have drivers for Windows 98, I will not be pleased it that turns out not to be the case! The card even has an IDE connector on it, but I don't think I'll need that as my board already has one (it's being used for an ancient DVD-RAM drive!) When the backup drive is the only thing connected to the Asmedia card, things will hopefully be simpler. Changing the drivers doesn't seem to have made much difference, although the chkdsk readouts are pretty clean now between XP and 10. The crunch will come when I write a lot of files to the drive again, I suspect! I'm actually not going to put my phone backup back onto the drive again, I'm going to use another drive, very likely just a USB memory stick, to back that up. It is after all actually a backup of a backup, just in case the phone dies, or I lose it, and the original backup drive dies! I'm almost more puzzled now as to why the other 500GB drive is not working with the card, although this is a bit off-topic, of course. I'm almost 100% sure that there's nothing wrong with the drive, and in fact another drive produced the same result. Further tests seem to indicate that reading the drive is fine, blisteringly fast and no errors. Writing is the complete opposite, very slow and masses of errors in the event log. I was clutching at straws that updating the drivers might help this, but it hasn't. It's the same in Windows XP and Windows 10, so it must be something quite fundamental, and yet the 3TB drive shows no controller errors at all! I cannot explain that.

OK, a bit of an update! I decided to delete the backup of my mobile phone from the backup drive. Apart from anything else, over 20000 image files are duplicated on the drive, as they are both in their original folders, and also in the phone backup, which includes the phone's SD card where copies of them are so that I can view them on my phone! The phone backup folders seem for some reason to be generating the vast majority of the chkdsk errors, and it's confusing as I don't know, if it says that a particular image file is corrupt, whether it's the copy in the original backed up folder, or in the backed up phone backup folder! Having done that, the number of errors has drastically reduced again. I'm still getting clean chkdsk runs in XP which then show errors in 10 without even manually accessing the drive, and vice versa. The errors are not severe, no cross-linked files or anything like that, for instance in XP it keeps telling me it's deleting the index for a file called 'bootTel.dat'. If I allow it to do that, it's fine until I've been in Windows 10, and then the same error comes back in XP! That file has never been on the backup drive as far as I know, it seems to be a file that you might find in the root of the Windows 10 system drive, caused by a recovery operation, but nowhere else. That is another mystery! I was wondering whether to copy the phone backup back to the drive using Windows Explorer, just to see if the problems come back, which would exonerate QuickMirror as the cause of the errors. If I do that, my instinct would be to do it in XP, as that's what's really being tested. Incidentally, do we know for sure that the Windows XP version of chkdsk will work correctly with drives over 2TB, bearing in mind that Windows XP was never designed to use drives that big? Is it possible that the XP chkdsk is actually malfunctioning with the 3TB drive, and erroneously showing errors which aren't there, or even perhaps causing them? I guess the chkdsk from Server 2003 isn't worth trying?

The controller errors are a completely unexpected mystery. Why they should happen with two disks and not with a third disk I cannot explain. I will now do some mass file copying tests with Explorer, just to see if QuickMirror is causing the problem. I'm using 2.0.3.1 at the moment, with version 2.0.3.0001 of asachci32.sys and version 1.0.0.1 of ahcipp32.dll, I assume that's OK. I'm not using a riser, if you remember there was no room to physically get it in! The disk is connected to one of the SATA ports on the card, with a flying lead to an eSATA socket on a backplate. The SATA sockets on the card are apparently electronically identical to the eSATA sockets on the card, there is just a passive jumper switchover system between them.

Using QuickMirror has never shown any problems like this before, and the backup disk has always been connected via an add-on card, never directly connected to the motherboard. It could be that the Asmedia card is somehow inferior to the Silicon Image card I was using before, but surely that's not likely, as the Asmedia card is a much more recent piece of hardware. I will now try some file copying just using Explorer, and see if it produces the same result, just to try to eliminate QuickMirror as a possible source of the issue. The first thing I checked of course was the connections, but remember that it works fine with the 3TB disk, there are no controller errors, there are with the other two disks. All I'm doing is sliding one disk out of the enclosure, and then sliding another one in. Nothing else is being changed. I cannot explain this.

OK, another update! @Andalu @jaclaz I tried using other drives, but without success. The first one I tried was the original backup drive, a 2TB Western Digital drive. It worked very slowly with chkdsk, and I quickly discovered that this was because there were a large number of controller errors with it. This was happening in Windows XP and Windows 10. I couldn't resolve this, so I decided to try with another drive I had as a spare, which could be wiped if necessary. That is a 500GB Seagate Barracuda drive, from the same series as the 3TB drive I've been trying to use. Exactly the same result, slow intermittent operation with large numbers of controller errors being logged. I wondered if this was because of the drives being extended partitions on MBR disks, so I reformatted the 500GB drive with a primary GPT partition. Exactly the same, loads of controller errors, in XP and 10! I don't know why this is. I went back to the original 3TB disk, no controller errors! It was like the system would work with this disk, and only this disk, which doesn't make any sense to me! Because of this problem, I haven't been able to test whether the chkdsk errors between XP and 10 happen with all disks, or just the one I'm trying to use. Any ideas very gratefully received! Thanks, Dave.

Not out of the woods yet I'm afraid! I did the QuickMirror backup in Windows XP. It copied over 20000 files with apparently no error. Ran chkdsk in the drive, no problems. Rebooted, remounted the drive, ran chkdsk again, again no problems. So far, so good! Booted into Windows 10, mounted the drive, ran chkdsk. Errors, but nowhere nearly as many as I feared. Microsoft Windows [Version 10.0.19045.4046] (c) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. C:\WINDOWS\system32>chkdsk /f t: The type of the file system is NTFS. Volume label is BACKUP. Stage 1: Examining basic file system structure ... 109824 file records processed. File verification completed. Phase duration (File record verification): 2.20 seconds. 4 large file records processed. Phase duration (Orphan file record recovery): 0.00 milliseconds. 0 bad file records processed. Phase duration (Bad file record checking): 0.52 milliseconds. Stage 2: Examining file name linkage ... 9 reparse records processed. Correcting error in index $I30 for file A814. CHKDSK discovered free space marked as allocated in the bitmap for index $I30 for file A814. Sorting index $I30 in file A814. Deleting index entry backupHistoryInfo.xml in index $I30 of file F732. Deleting index entry BACKUP~1.XML in index $I30 of file F732. Deleting index entry CATEGORY_ICON in index $I30 of file F732. Deleting index entry CATEGO~1 in index $I30 of file F732. Deleting index entry SmartSwitchBackup_back.json in index $I30 of file F732. Deleting index entry SMARTS~2.JSO in index $I30 of file F732. Deleting index entry Video in index $I30 of file F732. Deleting index entry DCIM in index $I30 of file F9B3. Deleting index entry Image Files in index $I30 of file F9B4. Deleting index entry IMAGEF~1 in index $I30 of file F9B4. Deleting index entry Sound Files in index $I30 of file F9B4. Deleting index entry SOUNDF~1 in index $I30 of file F9B4. Correcting error in index $I30 for file 11EC3. CHKDSK discovered free space marked as allocated in the bitmap for index $I30 for file 11EC3. Sorting index $I30 in file 11EC3. Correcting error in index $I30 for file 11F98. Correcting error in index $I30 for file 11F98. CHKDSK discovered free space marked as allocated in the bitmap for index $I30 for file 11F98. Sorting index $I30 in file 11F98. Correcting error in index $I30 for file 126BA. CHKDSK discovered free space marked as allocated in the bitmap for index $I30 for file 126BA. Sorting index $I30 in file 126BA. Correcting error in index $I30 for file 128F3. CHKDSK discovered free space marked as allocated in the bitmap for index $I30 for file 128F3. Sorting index $I30 in file 128F3. Correcting error in index $I30 for file 12926. CHKDSK discovered free space marked as allocated in the bitmap for index $I30 for file 12926. Sorting index $I30 in file 12926. Correcting error in index $I30 for file 1299F. CHKDSK discovered free space marked as allocated in the bitmap for index $I30 for file 1299F. Sorting index $I30 in file 1299F. Deleting index entry 2014 Pagoda Visit 03.jpg in index $I30 of file 14DEC. Deleting index entry 2014 Pagoda Visit 04.jpg in index $I30 of file 14DEC. Deleting index entry 2014 Pagoda Visit 17.jpg in index $I30 of file 14DEC. Deleting index entry 2014 Pagoda Visit 18.jpg in index $I30 of file 14DEC. Deleting index entry 2014 Pagoda Visit 19.jpg in index $I30 of file 14DEC. Deleting index entry 2014 Pagoda Visit 20.jpg in index $I30 of file 14DEC. Deleting index entry 2014 Pagoda Visit 21.jpg in index $I30 of file 14DEC. Deleting index entry 2014 Pagoda Visit 22.jpg in index $I30 of file 14DEC. Deleting index entry 2014 Pagoda Visit 23.jpg in index $I30 of file 14DEC. Deleting index entry 2014 Pagoda Visit 24.jpg in index $I30 of file 14DEC. Deleting index entry 2017 April from Alastair.jpg in index $I30 of file 14DEC. Deleting index entry 2017AP~1.JPG in index $I30 of file 14DEC. Deleting index entry 2023 July.jpg in index $I30 of file 14DEC. Deleting index entry 2023 October with Lynda and Bob 01.jpg in index $I30 of file 14DEC. Deleting index entry 2023 October with Lynda and Bob 02.jpg in index $I30 of file 14DEC. Deleting index entry 2023 October with Lynda and Bob 03.jpg in index $I30 of file 14DEC. Deleting index entry 2023JU~1.JPG in index $I30 of file 14DEC. Deleting index entry 2023OC~1.JPG in index $I30 of file 14DEC. Deleting index entry 2023OC~2.JPG in index $I30 of file 14DEC. Deleting index entry 2023OC~3.JPG in index $I30 of file 14DEC. Deleting index entry 20D7D2~1.JPG in index $I30 of file 14DEC. Deleting index entry 20D7D6~1.JPG in index $I30 of file 14DEC. Deleting index entry 20D7DE~1.JPG in index $I30 of file 14DEC. Deleting index entry 20E7DA~1.JPG in index $I30 of file 14DEC. Deleting index entry 20E7DE~1.JPG in index $I30 of file 14DEC. Deleting index entry 20EFCA~1.JPG in index $I30 of file 14DEC. Deleting index entry 20EFCE~1.JPG in index $I30 of file 14DEC. Deleting index entry 20F3D2~1.JPG in index $I30 of file 14DEC. Deleting index entry 20F3DA~1.JPG in index $I30 of file 14DEC. Deleting index entry 20F3DE~1.JPG in index $I30 of file 14DEC. 113184 index entries processed. Index verification completed. Phase duration (Index verification): 17.72 seconds. CHKDSK is scanning unindexed files for reconnect to their original directory. Recovering orphaned file U14560~1.PNG (A8DF) into directory file A814. Recovering orphaned file U14560~2.PNG (A8E0) into directory file A814. Recovering orphaned file U14561~1.PNG (A8E1) into directory file A814. Recovering orphaned file u14561_states.png (A8E1) into directory file A814. Recovering orphaned file U14561~2.PNG (A8E2) into directory file A814. Recovering orphaned file u14561_states-r.png (A8E2) into directory file A814. Recovering orphaned file U14572~1.PNG (A8E3) into directory file A814. Recovering orphaned file u14572_states.png (A8E3) into directory file A814. Recovering orphaned file U14572~2.PNG (A8E4) into directory file A814. Recovering orphaned file u14572_states-r.png (A8E4) into directory file A814. Skipping further messages about recovering orphans. 1289 unindexed files scanned. 1289 unindexed files recovered to original directory. Phase duration (Orphan reconnection): 0.00 milliseconds. 0 unindexed files recovered to lost and found. Phase duration (Orphan recovery to lost and found): 3.04 milliseconds. 9 reparse records processed. Phase duration (Reparse point and Object ID verification): 2.09 milliseconds. Stage 3: Examining security descriptors ... Security descriptor verification completed. Phase duration (Security descriptor verification): 55.16 milliseconds. 1680 data files processed. Phase duration (Data attribute verification): 0.51 milliseconds. Correcting errors in the master file table's (MFT) BITMAP attribute. CHKDSK discovered free space marked as allocated in the volume bitmap. Windows has made corrections to the file system. No further action is required. 2861586 MB total disk space. 1593509280 KB in 83802 files. 26924 KB in 1682 indexes. 0 KB in bad sectors. 264984 KB in use by the system. 65536 KB occupied by the log file. 1336463896 KB available on disk. 4096 bytes in each allocation unit. 732566271 total allocation units on disk. 334115974 allocation units available on disk. Total duration: 28.34 seconds (28348 ms). C:\WINDOWS\system32> Obviously there shouldn't be any of course! I then did another QuickMirror backup in Windows 10. It replaced a lot of files. I notice that the chkdsk log says "Skipping further messages about recovering orphans." That presumably means that there could be many thousands more which aren't being recorded! Have decided that was clean, I went back to XP. Ran chkdsk, and there were a huge number of errors again, and chkdsk is now permanently hanging when it's recovering orphaned files, and never completing. So, I really do not know what is happening here. I think what I will do now is go back to my original 2TB backup drive, and try the whole operation with that. If that shows no problems, either the 3TB drive I've got is indeed faulty, or it's because it's over 2TB. If it shows the same problem, I can only assume that this has always been happening, and I've just never been aware of it before!

Thanks, that looks like an interesting utility, I will file it away for possible future use! It looks as if the problem has resolved anyway. I tried just saying 'No' to the pop-up, and the add driver dialogue popped up. If I dismissed it, the drive mounted and worked anyway. I then went into the driver update dialogue, told it to update the driver with what was already there, and it succeeded and the windows no longer pop up when I connect the disk, so it looks as if all is now OK. Now I'm just trying to pluck up the courage to do another QuickMirror backup onto the drive, which will replace all the files I deleted! I do hope the corruption problem doesn't immediately come back. I'm going to do it in XP, as that's the configuration that isn't standard and needs to be tested. Wish me luck!

Thanks, I did wonder if SFC and/or Windows File Protection was causing the problem. There is no record of this in the system event logs though, and I thought there usually is if WFP restores, or tries to restore, a file. I had already copied the 'new' disk.sys file to DLLCache, and scsiport.sys too. Neither of them were there at all previously. partmgr.sys was already in the DLLCache folder, and I replaced it with the 'new' one too. The strange thing is, that file replace message refers to a temporary file. When I looked at the temporary file, its version details said it was actually the original version of scsidisk.sys, not disk.sys! I can't explain that, except that perhaps it's renamed to disk.sys when it's copied.

OK, I tried today doing another ISO backup of my Windows 10 system drive, using Windows 7 Backup and Restore (yes, I know, I know!) which I usually do every week. It went fine, and there were no errors in chkdsk after it. I then went into Windows XP, and checked with chkdsk again, still no issues recorded except for one, "Correcting errors in the uppercase file." I think that's fairly minor. So far, so good. @Andalu One issue that has now come up on XP is that the drive is fine if I power up the enclosure before booting to XP. However, if I power it up while I'm in XP, where it should just appear as it's on an eSATA connection, I get this - If I say 'Continue Anyway' I then get this - Obviously I say 'no' as I don't want to overwrite the Win2003 DISK.SYS file! The drive then installs. This seems to happen every time I try to add the disk while I'm in XP. Is this normal expected behaviour? If it is, it's rather a PITA! Can anything be done to avoid it? I would perhaps have expected something like this the first time I did, but not every time. Why doesn't it remember the disk?

You and me both! QuickMirror does use caching and multithreading when doing its backups, depending on the operating system, but whether that is relevant I don't know. If you haven't looked already, you can see the details at QuickMirror.com. There were a couple of files with errors that I know were not copied to the drive by QuickMirror, but the vast majority were, and all since the beginning of this month.

@Andalu @jaclaz OK, back again! Quite a lot to report. Thanks to @Andalu I have now got rid of the paragon GPT driver. I'm amazed that you can add GPT support to XP just by substituting a few files from its server equivalent, but I'm not complaining! A much more elegant way of doing it, even though I gather that I can now no longer connect the disk directly to the motherboard, I have to use the Asmedia card. Anyway, that is all working fine, but it didn't get rid of the file system errors. I then analysed what was happening more closely, and I realised that all the files which were showing errors in chkdsk were files that had been added to the drive in the last few weeks. There are many thousands of other older files in the drive which appear to be always absolutely fine. So, it is just possible that this file system corruption is in fact nothing to do with the way the disk is connected in XP, or what driver it may or may not be using. I analysed which files were always appearing in the error messages, and folder by folder, I deleted them from the drive. The error lists gradually got shorter and shorter. It took me a long time to get rid of some of them permanently, as running chkdsk on the other OS sometimes put them back again! Some were actually stuck (invisibly) in the Recycle Bin, and it was a bit of a job getting rid of them! I now have clean chkdsk runs on both XP and 10, which is a great relief! Now I'm wondering what I can do to minimise the chance of the problem coming back again as soon as I do another backup, particularly which OS is safest to do it in. I use a program called QuickMirror to do my file backups. I've been using it for many years, and it's never caused any problem. It's really fast, as the name implies! Until recently I've only ever used it on Windows XP and Windows 98, but recently they produced an update which initially didn't work on XP or 98, so I installed it on 10. I did several backups with it, with apparently no problems, until the issue was fixed on XP and I could use it there. I assumed I could have (separate) copies of it on XP and 10, and use whichever I liked. Maybe this was a mistake! I've been doing backups using both operating systems, and I think that's when the problems started, in fact the first symptoms were when I started to get errors during the backup process. I've no reason to think that QuickMirror does anything differently on XP and 10, so this is a bit of a puzzle. I will certainly be on to the developer immediately if I find that this is indeed the case! Any thoughts?

Thanks to @Andalu I can now hopefully dispense with the Paragon GPT driver. I will do that and see if it makes any difference to the filesystem corruption issue.

OK, here's what i got when I went back to XP. Microsoft Windows XP [Version 5.1.2600] (C) Copyright 1985-2001 Microsoft Corp. D:\Users\Dave>chkdsk t: The type of the file system is NTFS. Volume label is BACKUP. WARNING! F parameter not specified. Running CHKDSK in read-only mode. CHKDSK is verifying files (stage 1 of 3)... File verification completed. CHKDSK is verifying indexes (stage 2 of 3)... Index verification completed. CHKDSK is verifying security descriptors (stage 3 of 3)... Security descriptor verification completed. Windows has checked the file system and found no problems. 2861586 MB total disk space. 1617508832 KB in 85507 files. 27348 KB in 1716 indexes. 0 KB in bad sectors. 265220 KB in use by the system. 65536 KB occupied by the log file. 1312463684 KB available on disk. 4096 bytes in each allocation unit. 732566271 total allocation units on disk. 328115921 allocation units available on disk. D:\Users\Dave> And here's what I got back in 10. Microsoft Windows [Version 10.0.19045.4046] (c) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. C:\WINDOWS\system32>chkdsk t: The type of the file system is NTFS. Volume label is BACKUP. WARNING! /F parameter not specified. Running CHKDSK in read-only mode. Stage 1: Examining basic file system structure ... Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 14E0C is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 14E11 is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 14E13 is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 14E18 is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 14E19 is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 14E1A is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 14E1B is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 14E6B is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 14E6C is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 14E70 is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 14E76 is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 14E78 is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 14E7D is corrupt. Attribute record (A0, $I30) from file record segment 14E9E is corrupt. Attribute record (A0, $I30) from file record segment 14EFD is corrupt. Attribute record (A0, $I30) from file record segment 14EFE is corrupt. Attribute record (A0, $I30) from file record segment 14F05 is corrupt. Attribute record (A0, $I30) from file record segment 14F12 is corrupt. Attribute record (A0, $I30) from file record segment 14F21 is corrupt. Attribute record (A0, $I30) from file record segment 14F2E is corrupt. Attribute record (A0, $I30) from file record segment 14F48 is corrupt. Attribute record (A0, $I30) from file record segment 14F4B is corrupt. Attribute record (A0, $I30) from file record segment 15037 is corrupt. Attribute record (A0, $I30) from file record segment 15042 is corrupt. Attribute record (A0, $I30) from file record segment 15048 is corrupt. Attribute record (A0, $I30) from file record segment 1504F is corrupt. Attribute record (A0, $I30) from file record segment 15073 is corrupt. Attribute record (A0, $I30) from file record segment 15074 is corrupt. Attribute record (A0, $I30) from file record segment 15091 is corrupt. Attribute record (A0, $I30) from file record segment 150A8 is corrupt. Attribute record (A0, $I30) from file record segment 150C5 is corrupt. Attribute record (A0, $I30) from file record segment 150CF is corrupt. Attribute record (A0, $I30) from file record segment 150ED is corrupt. Attribute record (A0, $I30) from file record segment 150F5 is corrupt. Attribute record (A0, $I30) from file record segment 15107 is corrupt. Attribute record (A0, $I30) from file record segment 15108 is corrupt. Attribute record (A0, $I30) from file record segment 15134 is corrupt. Attribute record (A0, $I30) from file record segment 15142 is corrupt. Attribute record (A0, $I30) from file record segment 15168 is corrupt. Attribute record (A0, $I30) from file record segment 15199 is corrupt. Attribute record (A0, $I30) from file record segment 151D2 is corrupt. Attribute record (A0, $I30) from file record segment 151D3 is corrupt. Attribute record (A0, $I30) from file record segment 151EC is corrupt. Attribute record (A0, $I30) from file record segment 1521D is corrupt. Attribute record (A0, $I30) from file record segment 15272 is corrupt. Attribute record (A0, $I30) from file record segment 1A3BB is corrupt. Attribute record (A0, $I30) from file record segment 1A407 is corrupt. Attribute record (A0, $I30) from file record segment 1A429 is corrupt. Attribute record (A0, $I30) from file record segment 1A434 is corrupt. Attribute record (A0, $I30) from file record segment 1A435 is corrupt. Attribute record (A0, $I30) from file record segment 1A76D is corrupt. Attribute record (A0, $I30) from file record segment 1A77B is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 1A781 is corrupt. Attribute record (A0, $I30) from file record segment 1A790 is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 1A791 is corrupt. Attribute record (A0, $I30) from file record segment 1A7B8 is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 1A7DD is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 1A844 is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 1A855 is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 1A85F is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 1A863 is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 1A864 is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 1A867 is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 1A869 is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 1A870 is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 1A877 is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 1A879 is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 1A87B is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 1A87E is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 1A882 is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 1A889 is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 1A88A is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 1A88B is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 1A88D is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 1A896 is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 1A8A4 is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 1A8A6 is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 1A8B0 is corrupt. Attribute record (A0, $I30) from file record segment 1AA4C is corrupt. Attribute record (A0, $I30) from file record segment 1AA4D is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 1AA5E is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 1AA63 is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 1AA81 is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 1AA82 is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 1AA83 is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 1AA85 is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 1AA86 is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 1AA87 is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 1AA88 is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 1AA8A is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 1AA8B is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 1AA8C is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 1AA8D is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 1AA8E is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 1AA8F is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 1AA90 is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 1AA91 is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 1AA92 is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 1AA93 is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 1AA95 is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 1AABA is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 1AABC is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 1AABE is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 1AABF is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 1AAC0 is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 1AAC1 is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 1AAC3 is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 1AAC4 is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 1AAC5 is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 1AAC6 is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 1AAC7 is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 1AAC8 is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 1AAC9 is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 1AACA is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 1AACB is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 1AACC is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 1AACD is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 1AAD0 is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 1AAD1 is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 1AAD2 is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 1AAD3 is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 1AAD4 is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 1AAD5 is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 1AAD7 is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 1AAD8 is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 1AAD9 is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 1AADA is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 1AADB is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 1AADC is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 1AADD is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 1AADE is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 1AAE0 is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 1AAE1 is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 1AAE2 is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 1AAE3 is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 1AAE4 is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 1AAE5 is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 1AAE6 is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 1AAE7 is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 1AAE8 is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 1AAE9 is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 1AAEA is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 1AAEB is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 1AAEC is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 1AAED is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 1AAEE is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 1AAEF is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 1AAF0 is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 1AAF1 is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 1AAF2 is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 1AAF3 is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 1AAF4 is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 1AAF5 is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 1AAF6 is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 1AAF7 is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 1AAF8 is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 1AAF9 is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 1AAFA is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 1AAFB is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 1AAFC is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 1AAFD is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 1AAFE is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 1AAFF is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 1AB00 is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 1AB01 is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 1AB02 is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 1AB03 is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 1AB04 is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 1AB05 is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 1AB06 is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 1AB07 is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 1AB08 is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 1AB09 is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 1AB0A is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 1AB0B is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 1AB0C is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 1AB0D is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 1AB0E is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 1AB0F is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 1AB10 is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 1AB11 is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 1AB12 is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 1AB13 is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 1AB14 is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 1AB15 is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 1AB16 is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 1AB17 is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 1AB18 is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 1AB19 is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 1AB1A is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 1AB1B is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 1AB1C is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 1AB1D is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 1AB1E is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 1AB1F is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 1AB20 is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 1AB21 is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 1AB22 is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 1AB23 is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 1AB24 is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 1AB25 is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 1AB26 is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 1AB40 is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 1AB41 is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 1AB42 is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 1AB49 is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 1AB64 is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 1AB90 is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 1AB9D is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 1ABCB is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 1ABCD is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 1ABD2 is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 1AC15 is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 1ACAD is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 1ACAF is corrupt. Attribute record (80, "") from file record segment 1ACBA is corrupt. 109824 file records processed. File verification completed. Phase duration (File record verification): 7.90 seconds. 2 large file records processed. Phase duration (Orphan file record recovery): 0.00 milliseconds. Errors found. CHKDSK cannot continue in read-only mode. C:\WINDOWS\system32> Looking at the Chkdsk logs it does strike me that the folders with the errors always seem to be the same ones. They are part of my mobile phone backup, mainly image files in folders at at - T:\Phone Backup\Backup\SM-G935F\SM-G935F_07762200581\SM-G935F_20240201191121\Photo\_EXTERNAL_\Archive Whether this is signifiant I don't know, perhaps the path length? Sorry I have to leave this for a few hours now. I'll be back!

So sorry, I hadn't picked up that, or if I did, I had forgotten about it! If it's likely to be the cause of the issue, I will certainly uninstall the Paragon driver. Where can I get the Win2003 files from? He may have been right, but I'm not quite ready to condemn the disk itself yet! Of course if this proves to be unresolvable, the disk would certainly be a prime suspect as the culprit.