# Win CE help needed



## jack and ape (Mar 26, 2011)

hello, my wife bought me a netbook for christmas (to be fair I did just say"get me a netbook" so its my own fault !)
its a Datawind Ubisurfer running Windows CE, with 128mb memory and 1gb hard drive, a little disapointing I know, but I thought I'd just buy an external hard drive for storing stuff I wanted. the problem is it doesn't seem to recognise my USB hard drive which I've tested on a desktop, also its not recognising an external dvd drive either.it does work with a memory stick though. the only good thing about it, is it comes with 2 years internet access into the price.
I've rang their support, (somewhere in India I think) and the first time I was told to reset it and if that didn't get things working to send the Ubisurfer back and they would fix or replace it. tried that, no luck. on ringing back for an address I was told by another techie that it wouldn't work with a hard drive or DVD drive but only a memory stick.
so my question is: should it work with my hard drive/DVD drive or not and if not is there anyway of unlocking it so that it will?
any help with this would really be appreciated as I really need something to carry around with me and if I buy myself another netbook, the Mrs will give me ear ache !!!
thanks in advance 
Ian.


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## sinclair_tm (Mar 11, 2005)

Well, it's your fault for not pointing her in the correct direction as to what you needed out of a netbook. It's also her fault for not doing her homework to see what works best for what you need.

But as for getting it to work with drives, I think you are stuck, as I don't believe that CE has that capability.


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## jack and ape (Mar 26, 2011)

thanks for that sinclair, I was actually looking for some helpful advice,but thanks anyway.


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## Wrench97 (May 10, 2008)

CE does read the NTFS file system naively, Fat only, and also has a limit of a 4 gig partition this is the only work around I've heard of but I have never used it to know how well it works> Paragon Software Introduces NTFS for Windows CE, Providing Mobile and Embedded Devices With Full Access to NTFS Storage


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## sinclair_tm (Mar 11, 2005)

I don't believe that it is a file system issue with not being able to read NTFS, like I said, I don't believe that CE can read mass storage devices, aka, hard drives and optical drives. This makes sense with what wrench said with a 4 Gb limit. You could try taking your USB drive and after taking everything off of it, try reformatting it in chunks that are 4 Gb or less in size. On a 400 Gb drive that'd be 100 volumes, not very useful. But then the drives may still not work if CE can't mount mass storage devices.


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