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I know a compound adjective can consist of a noun and a participle. But, sometimes the meanings of compound adjectives confuse me. What's the difference of noun with present participle and noun with past participle? How to use them?

Eg:Data-transferred hard drive, Data-transferring hard drive

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If you use a present participle, as a part of the complex adjective, it means you want to describe that this word is referring to the process, a subject of the sentence is a part of.

Here is an example.

This drive is involving into the data-transferring process.

Using a past participle implies that the subject (or the object) of the sentence is rather the result of the previous action.

Here is another example.

This process depends on several newly-transferred parameters.

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  • So, data-transferring hard drive can mean a hard drive perparing for data transferring or a hard drive is doing data transferring. And, data-transferred hard drive can imply a hard drive that has been transferred the data into. Did I get that,right?
    – Kam
    Feb 24 '16 at 10:53
  • Yes, data-transferring hard drive is just receiving or sending data (or it’s quite ready for receiving or sending), being an active part of the current data-transmission. But data-transferred hard drive could be like a current storage of the data, since this data has been transferred into this drive just before the moment of speaking or maybe a bit earlier, of course.
    – Violette
    Feb 24 '16 at 11:47

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