Problem Reading a Hard Drive

Discussion in 'SSD and HDD storage' started by N0sferatU, Feb 6, 2013.

  1. N0sferatU

    N0sferatU Ancient Guru

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    [SOLVED] Problem Reading a Hard Drive

    I just took my Hitachi Touro 3TB external enclosure apart to place the drive inside the computer (win 7 x64). When I plug it into the computer it is an unreadable disk. It shows 10% of the drive's capacity as "Healthy" and in RAW format requesting I format the disk. It then shows two other partitions that are unallocated (all 3 partitions totally the 3TB). This is incorrect.

    To rectify...

    1.) I tried a different SATA port
    2.) I updated my mobo to the newest firmware
    3.) I tried a different SATA cable

    Now, funny part is when I wire it back up to the external enclosure and plug it back into the computer...VOILA it works.

    So, my problem is getting the drive working internally what's the problem? I have a 4TB Touro coming in the mail and worst case (don't want to do this) I'll just dump everything off the 3TB onto the new 4TB and then format the 3TB internally.

    Thoughts?

    Computer is an older Core i5 build (specs on left in my sig)
     
    Last edited: Feb 7, 2013
  2. N0sferatU

    N0sferatU Ancient Guru

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    93 views and not one reply...?

    Don't leave me to attempting a format of this drive in an attempt to get this thing working internally.
     
  3. anticupidon

    anticupidon Ancient Guru

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    I was thinking about your motherboard not being able to "see" above 2,2 GB..
    And when you have it connecte by usb,maybe the driver "tricks" Windows about size/partitions and it just works.
    Have your 3 TB disk connected to your motherboard,boot of a live cd,Parted Magic will be my choice,yours can be different.
    Run Gparted,and see if there something wrong with your partitions.
    Also,run a antivirus test,there so many tools outhere.
    Last,one can run a low level diagnostic with MHDD,saee if it report back any anomalies.
     
  4. N0sferatU

    N0sferatU Ancient Guru

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    the final firmware upgrade for my mobo mentioned a fix for being able to see drives larger than 2TB. BIOS it sees it as a 3TB drive
     

  5. N0sferatU

    N0sferatU Ancient Guru

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    sorta solved...

    Copied everything off drive and plugged into computer still not reading. So I format the drive and then it won't make a partition larger than 2TB. I had to convert the drive to GPT for it to fully read the entire 3TB as one partition.
     
  6. mrmonsoon

    mrmonsoon Master Guru

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    The issue you are running into is the limit's of a 32bit operting system.

    As you probably found the only way around this is 64 bit operating system or gpt as opposed to mbr.

    "Capacity beyond 2TB cannot be addressed by Windows if the disk is initialized using the MBR partitioning scheme. For example, with a 3TB single disk initialized with MBR, Windows can create partitions up to the first 2TB, but the remaining capacity cannot be addressed and therefore cannot be utilized."
    http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2581408
     
  7. N0sferatU

    N0sferatU Ancient Guru

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    I'm on 64bit windows but I can't figure out for the life of me then how was the external drive readable at 3TB using MBR. I had to format it and convert to GPT to get it to read internally. That's what had me confused.

    I just bought a 4TB version of the same drive and first thing I did was destroy the partition, convert to GPT, and reformat the drive since I don't want to deal with this again.

    Is there some sort of conversion on the USB controller in the enclosure that makes a full 3TB readable partition via an MBR based system?
     

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