Trouble initializing a USB drive

Anonymous
2018-07-10T15:32:31+00:00

I am having trouble initializing an HDD that I have connected to my PC via USB.  I'm stuck, and I need some ideas.  Below is detail.

I am running Windows 10.  The outboard HDD disk in question was previously the internal C: drive on this PC.  I replaced it with a larger drive about four months ago purely so I would have more storage capacity; it was running fine at the time I replaced it, and it has been stored carefully since.  I am using a USB 2.0 to IDE SATA adapter cable to connect the disk to my PC via one of the PC's USB ports.  I've used this same cable to connect other HDDs to this same PC in the same manner successfully in the past.

When I navigate to ThisPC, the drive does not appear.  I right-click on START, choose Disk Management, and the following is displayed:

I click OK, and the following is displayed:

I run DiskPart, and I get this:

The Event Viewer shows me this:

... and this:

... and this:

Note that the second to last screen says the disk was "not migrated due to partial or ambiguous match".

I have no idea where to go from here.

Easy responses would be "the disk is bad" or "the disk is old and no longer supported".  I doubt that either is the case.  The disk worked fine until it was excised from the machine and replaced four months ago.  Since then, it's been stored carefully and not subjected to impact, moisture, extremes of temperature, etc.

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks.

Windows for home | Windows 10 | Install and upgrade

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  1. Anonymous
    2018-07-10T22:13:13+00:00

    Hi,

    How are you powering the drive and\or adapter ?

    I have had mixed results using a USB to IDE\SATA adapter over the years...

    Is this drive IDE or SATA ?

    If the drive is IDE you might try setting the jumpers to "Cable Select"...

    Master might confuse the adapter...

    It is possible that there is something about the permissions\ownership of the drive that is causing problems, but I suspect that the underlying problem is that the machine was shutdown and the drive originally removed, while Fast Startup was enabled...

    This is almost a sure fire way to trigger errors...

    One thing you might try is to use a bootable Linux based File Explorer of some type...

    Older versions of Parted Magic have this feature, and are available for free as a ISO that will burn to a bootable CD or Flash Drive...

    The newer versions require that you purchase it to create the bootable media...

    If nothing else, this may enable you to copy the files on the problem drive to something else... Parted Magic may also have a fdisk\chkdsk type feature that may work better...

    BTW... The System Reserved Partition is probably the 300-500mb "Recovery" partition where the WinRE "Repair\Recovery" files are kept...… I'm sure your drive is more like 500GB or larger, not 500mb... correct ?

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  2. Anonymous
    2018-07-10T21:55:29+00:00

    Sorry Paul. I'm working on a half dozen flash, external and hard drive cases right now and got it mixed around. You can try the File recovery software I mentioned to see what they find since it hasn't been formatted over.

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  3. Anonymous
    2018-07-10T21:53:12+00:00

    My sole reason for wanting to connect this drive is to browse the files that are on it.

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  4. Anonymous
    2018-07-10T21:50:59+00:00

    Yes.

    I'd replace it with an SSD which is the best upgrade you can give your PC - lightning fast, better than a new higher end PC without one - swap it in and do the Clean Install in the link below:

    Do this Clean Install which should get you past all difficulties as it has hundreds of thousands of others who have followed the steps in this link and never come back to report another problem: http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wiki...

    You will get and keep the best possible install to the exact extent you stick with the steps, tools and methods in the linked tutorial. It's a better install than any amount of money could buy and a great learning experience that will make you the master of your PC.

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  5. Anonymous
    2018-07-10T21:48:02+00:00

    I downloaded and installed SeaTools and ran it on the disk.  The disk fails.  No further details are provided.  What do you make of that?  I'm guessing this implies that the disk is bad.

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