Trouble initializing a USB drive

Anonymous

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:

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.

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53 answers

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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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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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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Anonymous

2018-07-12T12:54:36+00:00

The drive is getting its power from the cable. My sense is that it's getting adequate power. If I put my hand on the drive, I can feel the slight vibration suggesting that the disk is spinning. Also, per above, the computer is able to read some information from the drive, apparently information about the file system. Also, I've made this same set-up work with other drives in the past.

Your idea regarding "Fast Startup" seems promising. If I were to work on the hypothesis that that's the problem what, if anything, could I do to correct it?

Sorry, did I say mb? I meant gb. To restate accurately: The disk is 550 gb in total size. All sizes quoted above should be in gb, not mb. My error. Sorry for any confusion.
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Anonymous

2018-07-12T15:09:45+00:00

Hi,

The drive may not be getting enough power for more demanding tasks, but if this process has worked with other drives, then that may not be the problem...

The problem with the Fast Startup issues is that it has about the same effect as pulling the plug on your computer while it is running... It can corrupt the disks because they were not "Shutdown" properly...

Sometimes a ChkDsk can fix this, and sometimes not...

I had one drive in particular with issues... Some files wouldn't appear, read errors, and etc.. ChkDsk claimed there were no issues...

I was able to use the File Explorer included in Parted Magic to read and\or copy some of the files... The problem got worse, and Windows had problems reading anything...

After many attempts with ChkDsk Fix, ChkDsk suddenly detected the errors and fixed them... The disk worked normally after ward, but may have lost a file or two...

I was able to copy everything off of it to another drive... The drive still provides older backup of the files that were on it, but it is not trustworthy enough for everyday use...

I don't know for sure if the issue is of a failing drive, or a Fast Startup type problem..

If I were you, I would make a few more attempts at getting ChkDsk to fix what it can... The next thing would be to try accessing the files with the Linux program...

That all in itself may trigger some type of repair attempt...

For some reason the Linux File Explorer was able to read and copy files that Windows would\could not..
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