External drive not mounting in Windows

[occsean]

Customer checks in a 4tb Seagate 2.5" drive stating that it cannot be seen in Windows..When I plug it in to my rig it will be seen in both device manager as well as disk management and is assigned a drive letter. The drive letter will appear in explorer but is not accessbile. The volumes will populate correctly but it just can't be opened in Windows...Also event viewer throws an event 441 failure to migrate HDD during install (exact error as this). That was on Windows 10. I also used a Windows 7 box and got the same behavior.

However, when I plug the drive into my MacBook Pro running Sierra it mounts, is viewable, and I can manipulate files and folders.

The drive is 4tb formatted as GPT

Any ideas on what's going on with Windows and this drive?

 

[lcoughey]

My guess is that it is starting to fail with weak heads, firmware issues and bad sectors in the MFTs. If you are going to do anything at all in house, your first step should be to get a full sector-by-sector clone of the drive with ddrescue or hddsuperclone.

 

[occsean]

I downloaded a drive fitness tester on OSX and the drive passed with no errors. No bad sectors etc. Is it possible that the test is missing something? Program is called Drive Dx and seemed legit.

 

[Krynn72]

I downloaded a drive fitness tester on OSX and the drive passed with no errors. No bad sectors etc. Is it possible that the test is missing something? Program is called Drive Dx and seemed legit.

Haven't used that software but I'm guessing it just looks at SMART which is far from reliable. It certainly won't tell you if there are weak heads or firmware issues.

 

[lcoughey]

How long did the test take? A 4TB drive has about 8 billion sectors and should take about 24 hours to complete. But, if you are going to read every sector once in order to test it, why not copy that sector to a known good drive, just in case?

 

[occsean]

How long did the test take? A 4TB drive has about 8 billion sectors and should take about 24 hours to complete. But, if you are going to read every sector once in order to test it, why not copy that sector to a known good drive, just in case?

Good point..Test was fairly quick so yeah, probably just polled S.M.A.R.T. Haven't imaged it yet due to not having an extra 4TB drive laying around to image it to. The drive is at 98% capacity so I guess I need to buy at least a 4TB drive

 

[lcoughey]

Make sure, when you do clone the drive, that you are using a program that is designed to handle bad sectors and has a log so that you never have to read a sector a second time, even if you have to repower the system.

 

[Markverhyden]

And find out if the data on the drive is the only copy or not. So many think it's "backed up" just because it's on an external drive so they keep no other copies anywhere else.

 

[occsean]

And find out if the data on the drive is the only copy or not. So many think it's "backed up" just because it's on an external drive so they keep no other copies anywhere else.

Lol. It's the customers repository of movies and music, I'm sure all legally acquired.


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[Porthos]

If they really VALUE the data stop now and send it out. You don't want try to "fix" it. or keep powering it up till you find out what the data is WORTH $$$$ to them.

If it stays explain the risks and the pitfalls of you doing it. Get a release signed first if its not too late already.

 

[Markverhyden]

Lol. It's the customers repository of movies and music, I'm sure all legally acquired.


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LOL!!!