My thunderbolt external drive causes Windows 10 to reboot in Bootcamp. Normal? Fix?

I have an imac retina.

Late 2014 when they came out.

Pretty sure they are. I went through the same process I've used in the past, including making the driver thumb drive as they instruct. I tried to double-check to make sure there was no updated driver and I found nothing.

Sorry to ask, but is there a way for me to double check if the drivers actually installed?

I have confirmed that it is definitely the thunderbolt making Windows re-boot endlessly and eventually crash. It works fine otherwise?

Thanks.

Thanks for the response.

I will re-boot in a few minutes and double check the Control Panel. The problem I have is that if I boot with the external drive connected, or attach it after booting, within 10 seconds the system re-boots automatically. This limits my ability to check.

It is the My Book Thunderbolt Duo drive, 8TB. It works perfectly on the OS X side, including when I use Parallels to boot into Windows. I need to use Windows via Bootcamp for one piece of software. I had to disconnect this external drive when I installed Windows via bootcamp because it was causing a conflict/confusion. I found that solution on a message board. So it was giving trouble even during the installation process. I wonder if Microsoft just doesn't support Thunderbolt connected drives?

I will check out the Control Panel now. Thanks.

I Am on the Windows side now. I disconnected the thunderbolt drive and booted into boot camp. Control panel all looks good. I then attached the thunderbolt. Windows made the sound acknowleding the attached device. The two drives then popped up in control panel and the device itself oddly popped up under "unspecified." Described as Base System Device. Says no driver installed but seems to not be a problem. Sat for about 7 minutes doing work. No problems. No restart problem.

So I then rebooted on my own back into Windows while leaving the thunderbolt drive connected. After start up within 15 seconds it locks up and reboots twice. Disconnect thunderbolt, it stops rebooting and works as normal.

I deleted just the line including my name at the top/bottom.

Diskutil list:

/dev/disk0 (internal, physical):

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

0: GUID_partition_scheme *1.0 TB disk0

1: EFI EFI 209.7 MB disk0s1

2: Apple_HFS Macintosh HD 894.0 GB disk0s2

3: Apple_Boot Recovery HD 650.0 MB disk0s3

4: Microsoft Basic Data BOOTCAMP 105.7 GB disk0s4

/dev/disk1 (external, physical):

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

0: GUID_partition_scheme *4.0 TB disk1

1: EFI EFI 209.7 MB disk1s1

2: Apple_RAID 4.0 TB disk1s2

3: Apple_Boot Boot OS X 134.2 MB disk1s3

/dev/disk2 (external, physical):

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

0: GUID_partition_scheme *4.0 TB disk2

1: EFI EFI 209.7 MB disk2s1

2: Apple_RAID 4.0 TB disk2s2

3: Apple_Boot Boot OS X 134.2 MB disk2s3

/dev/disk3 (external, virtual):

#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER

0: Apple_HFS My Book Thunderbolt... +8.0 TB disk3

diskutil cs list

No CoreStorage logical volume groups found

I bought this My Book Drive at the same time as the new imac and I've used it since then. Can't recall if I bought straight from Apple or third party. I know that at one time I played around with making it a RAID drive but then went back to just using it as two separate drives.

One time when I ejected the My Book recently, I noticed it asked me which partition did I intend to eject it from, or if I wanted to eject it from the entire thing. It only did that once out of about 10 ejections so far (needed to re-boot into windows). Not sure if that is helpful info.

No, I did not intend to split the My Book to use with both OS. I intend to use this only for the OS X, but I don't want to have to eject it every time I wish to go into Bootcamp.

I used the utility that came with the My book to reformat it as I recall. You are correct that I guess OS X has been "permissive" as I've noticed no oddities. Your description is accurate as to the Windows experience.

So should I reformat it? I can copy all of the content over to my imac, reformat it, and then put the info back if needed.

Thanks for taking the time to help me investigate this stuff.

I have the info copied over, but Im confused by the NTFS format. Is this still valid? If so, do I really want their to be read only on the NTFS? Has this changed? thought I had a few files over 4gb, so surprised Fat32 has worked.

Most external hard drives (HD) are sold in a format called NTFS, which is designed to work with Windows. Macs read and write to a different format, called HFS+. Another format, called FAT32 is compatible with both OS platforms. Here's a look at how the different HD format types function:

FAT32 (File Allocation Table)
- Natively read/write FAT32 on Windows and Mac OS X.
- Maximum file size: 4GB
- Maximum volume size: 2TB

NTFS (Windows NT File System)
- Natively read/write NTFS on Windows. - Read-only NTFS on Mac OS X
- Native NTFS support can be enabled in Snow Leopard and above but has proven instable.
- Maximum file size: 16 TB
- Maximum volume size: 256TB

HFS+ (Hierarchical File System, aka Mac OS Extended)
- Natively read/write HFS+ on Mac OS X
- Required for Time Machine
- Maximum file size: 8EiB
- Maximum volume size: 8EiB

Thanks agin for the info. Should I be using the WD Drive Utility to format this drive or the Disk Utility in OS X? When I'm in the WD Drive Utility, it has an option for erase drive and the only option I see is HFS+J and there is another option for ExFat which appears to be grayed out. No other options shown.

I don't quite follow the advantage/purpose of splitting the two drives into the various partitions, but I'll try to read up on that. Based on your response, I'm thinking about just doing both of the two drives in the Duo as NTFS. I guess I'm not following if NTFS is "read only" on the Mac side (if the above thing I posted is accurate). It would seem to need to be HFS for read/write and to back up by time capsule.