ZOB Controller described a confused and uncertain hand off from an adjacent sector when automation simply did not function as expected; suggesting that; although automated; hand off functions must be closely monitored.

Narrative

I noticed a limited data block tracking toward my airspace from the Utica Sector. When I identified that it was close enough that they should have already put the aircraft into a hand off status to me; I became even more aware of watching the track. It was getting close to the boundary so I tracked up the aircraft from my flight list that matched the code and called back to verify with Utica Sector that I had RADAR and a track and just double checking that it was indeed the correct aircraft. Normally if they had the aircraft tracked up it would be a correlated target matched in our flight list. The Controller at Utica seemed surprised and said they had handed off that aircraft several minutes prior but I did not see a flash at all. We verified the track status and the position of the aircraft and they switched communication to me. After talking with some coworkers; they said we had a similar problem the day before with some hand offs where we were showing a failed hand off and ZBW was showing they had track control. [I'm] not sure how [the] automation works so very difficult for me to recommend anything other than increased awareness on both transferring and receiving controllers to insure the automation matches what we expect.