ReFS drive suddenly won't mount

S

Skipper007

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jun 28, 2004
Messages
185
Hello,

I regularly use different PCs in different locations, so I carry my data on a 3TB WD Passport Ultra. Due to issues with occassional bad sectors and file corruption on a previous USB portable, I decided to format it as ReFS and use integrity checking. It's been great - having the drive drop out due to a bumped cable won't corrupt files like with NTFS, and when I make backups, I know the files going into them are not corrupt.

Today it suddenly stopped mounting. Usually it "just works" and had been doing so about two hours prior. I've tried it on two computers with the same results, event viewer shows the following error when I first try to access the drive after booting:

"Volume I: is formatted as REFS but ReFS is unable to mount it; ReFS encountered status The volume repair was not successful.."

Subsequent access attempts elicit a:
"The file system detected a checksum error and was not able to correct. The folder is "<unable to determine file name>".

ReClaiMe File Recovery can actually see files on it, haven't been able to try recovering as I only have the trial version. But Windows Explorer refuses to open the drive at all.

Any idea what is going on here and if there is a fix?
 
If we assume that you experience drop outs on this drive, (hence your switch to ReFS), then we can guess that such a thing occurred again. Just because ReFS can confirm the file data is either good or bad, does not mean that ReFS is able to survive corruption of it's own data. Somehow, that has occurred.

It may be the case that you accept this, and keep using ReFS. If it is more important that the filesystem survive, you may want to go back to a simpler filesystem that might suffer less damage. There may not be one that can do that. The real question may be why you experience drop outs so often, and then fix that.
 
I didn't have an issue with the drive dropping out when used with my desktops. I did have such issue with my previous drive, but just before I got the new one I discovered long, flexible USB 3 cables and how they don't drop out as much as short, stiff ones. Where I still encountered drop outs is on those occasions where I would hook it up to an old laptop I have to show photos.

The last disconnect prior to the failure was from a desktop that I had just shut down. I do recall feeling the drive spin down when unplugged, but I don't think it was writing - my Asus M5A97 R2.0 boards (I have more than one computer using them) often seems to not power down USB peripherals completely when I shut the computer down.

I suspect some sort of file table corruption as Windows is complaining about the drive and not a specific file, so I suspect I would have been screwed had I been using NTFS too.
 
That could be marginal power on the laptop port. I have seen a drive fail to reliably spin up in marginal power circumstances. One of the reasons the newer USB port types mandate higher power capability.

If the OS isn't running, there shouldn't be any writing going on, even if the drive is still spinning.
 
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