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

Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.

0 comments

53 answers

Sort by: Oldest
Most helpful Newest Oldest
  1. Anonymous
    2018-07-10T16:32:42+00:00

    Also, the icon that appears in ThisPC reports that 139 mb of 549 mb are free, implying that 410 mb has been written.  So why does it show up as empty when I double-click on it?

    Was this answer helpful?

    0 comments
  2. Anonymous
    2018-07-10T16:47:35+00:00

    Also, DiskPart says that "there are no partitions on the disk".

    Disk Management still sees the disk as not "initialized".

    Was this answer helpful?

    0 comments
  3. Anonymous
    2018-07-10T18:16:39+00:00

    Have you tried the drive in another PC to compare and isolate the problem to the drive itself and not possibly the PC?

    I haven't seen one yet in Windows 10 but in Windows 7 what worked for Cyclic Redundancy check error is one of these: https://www.wikihow.com/Fix-a-Cyclic-Redundancy...

    If not you'll need to try to recover data which isn't as hard if it hasn't been formatted over (which makes it nearly impossible except for expensive forensic means): https://www.easeus.com/resource/fix-data-error-.... This is one tool, you can also try Recuva: http://www.piriform.com/recuva/features

    I hope this helps. Feel free to ask back any questions and let us know how it goes. I will keep working with you until it's resolved.

    ________________________________________________________

    Standard Disclaimer: There are links to non-Microsoft websites. The pages appear to be providing accurate, safe information. Watch out for ads on the sites that may advertise products frequently classified as a PUP (Potentially Unwanted Products). Thoroughly research any product advertised on the sites before you decide to download and install it.

    Was this answer helpful?

    0 comments
  4. Anonymous
    2018-07-10T19:41:44+00:00

    Yes, I've tried this on my laptop as well with the same result.

    I'm not inclined to go through the trouble of downloading and installing a third-party utility in an attempt to fix this.  In my experience, they rarely work.

    I ran chkdsk against the drive.  The results seem very normal.  See below.

    It's hard to understand why chkdsk can see the files, but I can't use the file explorer to browse the disk.  Similarly, at a command prompt, I can navigate to Q:, but dir shows the disk as empty.

    I'm not inclined to try a file recovery yet.  It seems like there ought to be a way to get this to work.

    Also, I've seen other threads where users have had similar problems.  I didn't see where any were solved, but I didn't look very hard.

    Any more ideas?

    Thanks.

    Was this answer helpful?

    0 comments
  5. Anonymous
    2018-07-10T19:47:14+00:00

    It says plainly in the Disk Check results that it's the System Reserved partition which boot Windows. Run Diskpart List Volume to see if it finds any other volumes on the drive to Disk Check.

    I wouldn't have suggested to run the tool if it wasn't needed. I help people in forums by the tens of thousands and most cases like these I've helped solve hundreds of times before at a minimum.

    Was this answer helpful?

    0 comments