Brain Buster Hard Drive Issue...

TechLarry

RIP [H] Brother - June 1, 2022
Joined
Aug 9, 2005
Messages
30,481
Ok, this has turned out to be a tough one.

I have a 4TB external WD USB hard drive.

It works fine, and mounts fine, on every machine I have, including my Mac, except for ONE.

I can't figure it.

It simply will not mount or show up on my main workstation.

It won't even show up in the Drive Manager, nor can I manage it in Diskpart.

It simply will not show up at all on this machine.

And before you little brainiacs recommend it, I have already used Diskpart to flush all remembered USB Hard Drive letters from the registry. I beat you to it :)

Still no mount.

I'm baffled. The drive is obviously fine because it works on all other machines.

Any idea's ?
 
Just throwing it out there... Is it possible you have a VM configured to grab USB drives upon detection?
The only other thing I can think of is if the USB port/controller it is being plugged into is bad or has missing drivers.
 
Just throwing it out there... Is it possible you have a VM configured to grab USB drives upon detection?
The only other thing I can think of is if the USB port/controller it is being plugged into is bad or has missing drivers.

That is a very intelligent idea!

But, I had already thought of that and the issue still remains when all VM's are shut down :(
 
Ok, wow this is SO Pissing me off.

I took the drive to my T430. Shows up fine. Fired up diskpart and tore it down to parade rest. Ripped every partition off of it and started from scratch. New profile, new format, the whole thing.

Works great on the T430, my HP Scectre 360, etc...

Took it to my desktop. Makes be-deep mount noise and....

No fucking drive.

I haven't been this challenged in a LONG time!

It tasks me and I shall have it!*





* - Actually I'm getting too old for this shit and I really just want it to work.....
 
Ok. God dammit this just does NOT make sense!

Look at the Diskpart list:


upload_2019-2-21_22-20-34.png


0 is my main SSD
1 is my secondary SSD
2 is my 4TB WD Black
3 is my 10TB WD Easystore

The 4TB WD Portable is not show.

But.....

Here it is in the Device Manager:

upload_2019-2-21_22-23-26.png



BUT!

Not showing up in Disk Management either:

upload_2019-2-21_22-27-19.png



SOAB.

I've tried removing the drive from the device manager several times. The drive does show back up in the Device manager when I plug it in, but it never shows up under My PC.

I even used usbdeview-x64 to go through EVERY USB device that has ever touched the machine, and removed every single one that is not active right now, including the entries for this stupid 4TB WD Portable.

No help.

WTF. I think Stephen King has hacked my machine.

Are there any security mechanisms in Windows 10, or Bitdefender, that can block a drive?
 
Is it possible that it isn't getting enough power? Perhaps the electronics are powered up but the drive isn't spinning up?
 
I have not used Win 10 but in Win 7 there is a setting to hide/unhide hidden folders or drives.

And one to hide empty drives.
 
It's possible it's one of those drives with the 3.3V pin issue. Look online for that. Try it with a molex to sata power adapter.
 
On the machine that the external drive doesn't mount on, have you tried, booting into a live linux system and see if the drive mounts? I had an external USB 3.0 SATA to USB cradle, and it worked on basically everything I owned for years but after I built my current rig, it wouldn't mount any drives at all and the only issue I could see was that it was a Win 10 problem. So I booted into a linux system on the same system and the drive worked IIRC. I never found a reason for it, I contacted the company asking about drivers and my old cradle, and they only replied there are none because it's a USB device and no drivers were necessary. My only solution was to just buy a new USB3 to SATA cradle.
 
It's possible it's one of those drives with the 3.3V pin issue. Look online for that. Try it with a molex to sata power adapter
It's an external USB hard drive. He didn't shuck it and try to use it internally. It works fine in other computers.

On the machine that the external drive doesn't mount on, have you tried, booting into a live linux system and see if the drive mounts?
I'm sure it will work because this is an OS-specific issue, but it might be worth a try just to eliminate that from the list of possible issues. He said the drive does show up in device manager, which means the USB detection and device identification is working fine. It's the linking of the hard disk to the Windows Disk Management system that is failing.

I wonder if the drive has the same device ID as another drive in the system somehow which prevents it from being displayed in disk management. The Event Viewer might log something in that case.
Disconnect the Easystore 10TB and then plug in the Elements.
 
I'm sure it will work because this is an OS-specific issue, but it might be worth a try just to eliminate that from the list of possible issues. He said the drive does show up in device manager, which means the USB detection and device identification is working fine. It's the linking of the hard disk to the Windows Disk Management system that is failing.
Then I am pretty sure it's some kind of controller driver compatibility issue. I don't remember exactly, but I am pretty sure the USB cradle I had did show up in device manager as some kind of USB device, but it just would refuse to mount any HD regardless of size I put in it. At the time I was thinking it might have had to do with that driver blacklist for some USB chipset manufacturer put in their win 10 driver because of counterfeit chips some manufacturers were buying and using in their products.
 
In cases where a particular USB drive works on other machines but not on 1 specific machine it is usually a corrupted USB driver on that machine. If you can, find out exactly which driver it is using on a machine where it works, and try deleting just that driver. If you can't find it on that machine, delete all devices, controllers and hubs under USB in the device manager and let the machine reinstall all the drivers and see if that corrects the problem.
 
I have not used Win 10 but in Win 7 there is a setting to hide/unhide hidden folders or drives.

And one to hide empty drives.

Yes, this is done in the drive manager. The drive doesn't even show up in the drive manager.
 
In cases where a particular USB drive works on other machines but not on 1 specific machine it is usually a corrupted USB driver on that machine. If you can, find out exactly which driver it is using on a machine where it works, and try deleting just that driver. If you can't find it on that machine, delete all devices, controllers and hubs under USB in the device manager and let the machine reinstall all the drivers and see if that corrects the problem.

Yeah, I've dug down and ripped all that stuff out and reinstalled it. No joy.
 
Ok, now WTF is this all about.

Bottom of my Drive List WITHOUT the drive connected:

upload_2019-2-22_16-15-34.png


Now, the same thing WITH the drive connected:

upload_2019-2-22_16-16-38.png


See anything different?

Yep. My Cloud Drive, which is purely a NAS network device and has absolutely NOTHING to do with drive mounting, drive letters, or anything else file system in Windows has just disappeared whenever I plug in the 4TB WD Portable. I could live with that if the fucking WD would show up in its place LOL

If I unplug it the WD network drive comes back

I may actually have to re-image this machine. I fucking hate losing though.
 
Before you rebuild:
What if you unplug the EasyStore 10TB drive and then plug in the Elements drive? (testing to see if EasyStore somehow "hides" Elements drive when both are plugged in)
What if you use a different USB cable for the Elements drive? (Testing to see if it makes any difference)
What if you use a different USB port? (I see that the Elements drive uses USB power - no external power supply like the EasyStore) (Testing to see if a different USB port/hub can supply more/different power to the Elements drive)
What if you unplug all USB devices from your system EXCEPT keyboard, mouse and Elements drive (testing to see if USB power is being overloaded).
Are you plugging the Elements drive into the MB itself or to a USB hub which is plugged into the MB? Try the other way (direct to MB if using hub or hub if going direct to MB).
 
Then I am pretty sure it's some kind of controller driver compatibility issue. I don't remember exactly, but I am pretty sure the USB cradle I had did show up in device manager as some kind of USB device, but it just would refuse to mount any HD regardless of size I put in it. At the time I was thinking it might have had to do with that driver blacklist for some USB chipset manufacturer put in their win 10 driver because of counterfeit chips some manufacturers were buying and using in their products.

I think I should mention the drive worked fine for quite some time. It just stopped. I unplugged it to move some data to my laptop, which it did fine, and that was the las time it ever mounted on my desktop
 
Before you rebuild:
What if you unplug the EasyStore 10TB drive and then plug in the Elements drive? (testing to see if EasyStore somehow "hides" Elements drive when both are plugged in)
What if you use a different USB cable for the Elements drive? (Testing to see if it makes any difference)
What if you use a different USB port? (I see that the Elements drive uses USB power - no external power supply like the EasyStore) (Testing to see if a different USB port/hub can supply more/different power to the Elements drive)
What if you unplug all USB devices from your system EXCEPT keyboard, mouse and Elements drive (testing to see if USB power is being overloaded).
Are you plugging the Elements drive into the MB itself or to a USB hub which is plugged into the MB? Try the other way (direct to MB if using hub or hub if going direct to MB).

I tried just about every port on the machine. I can bring down the easystore and try though.
 
The fact that the WD My Cloud "device" disappears from Network locations when the Elements drive is plugged in to a client PC is concerning. I would not think that should happen under normal circumstances. There is some sort of interaction going on causing this and I would guess that whatever "driver" creates the WD My Cloud "network location device" is incompatible with the Elements drive, at least in Windows 10 release 1809(?). Or there is some sort of corruption/misconfiguration deep inside Windows 10 device management services. In either case, I think WD My Cloud software/drivers is somehow directly responsible for preventing the USB Elements drive from being detected by Windows Disk Management.

Is the WD My Cloud device running the latest firmware? Is the My Cloud client software/drivers the latest version? What model of My Cloud device is it?
 
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