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  1. ½ way to Rigel 7 cornemuse's Avatar
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    Same cranky old man, new problem!

    I am having an issue here with hard drives. Well, one anyway.

    When I connected a (2 1/2") drive through a sata port, it didnt show up in 'my computer', did show up in 'Disk Management' but as 'dynamic' & 'foreign'. Only option was to reformat.

    This drive had been connected to this comp before, its been sitting in a drawer for a month or two. (Actually it was 1st partitioned/formatted on this computer initally)

    I connected it the same way to a second comp. In this one, in disk management it showed up as 'dynamic' 'simple volume', & option was to reactivate. It now shows up in 'my comp'.

    (The two comps are identical, except for some software differences, same mobo, vid card, memory, XPP-64)

    Why would this happen? The drive has a bunch of vids, and a whole bunch of mp3 files. I can copy them to somewhere else & reformat etc the drive. What would be the best option for the newly reformatted drive? So I dont have this issue again.

    Ha! simple, foreign, dynamic, primary, etc, whats the best route?

    -c-
    Yes, no, maybe, I don't know, Can you repeat the question?
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  2. You didn't say if the drive was an ntfs vol or not. I don't want to be a Debbie Downer, but it sounds like the drive is on its way out. Does the drive make any noises at all? The drive has been sitting in a drawer for a couple of months, and spinning rust was never designed for cold storage. That is the sad reality.

    Whenever I "had" a problem with spinning rust in the past I would boot a LiveCD of Knoppix to see if Knoppix could mount the offending drive. If it did, I would immediately start copying over as many files as possible.

    http://www.knopper.net/knoppix/index-en.html
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  3. ½ way to Rigel 7 cornemuse's Avatar
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    It is in ntfs format. Actually, it is a fairly new drive, just looked: 14 jun 2014. Only recently has it been used. (like since early this year)
    I put it into a usb drv case & plug it into my Argosy player to watch/listen. The Argosy uses some form of linux system. (I think) I have 2 other drives I do the same thing with. (all 320 gig drives) (If one is basically full, I use a diff one. after watching movies, I delete them. Eventually the drive is (almost) empty. <- thats the one I'll add files to next.

    The others I get occaisionally the 'reactivate' option in 'comp management', but they allus end up in my computer.

    -c-
    Yes, no, maybe, I don't know, Can you repeat the question?
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    Originally Posted by cornemuse View Post
    Same cranky old man, new problem!

    I am having an issue here with hard drives. Well, one anyway.

    When I connected a (2 1/2") drive through a sata port, it didnt show up in 'my computer', did show up in 'Disk Management' but as 'dynamic' & 'foreign'. Only option was to reformat.

    This drive had been connected to this comp before, its been sitting in a drawer for a month or two. (Actually it was 1st partitioned/formatted on this computer initally)

    I connected it the same way to a second comp. In this one, in disk management it showed up as 'dynamic' 'simple volume', & option was to reactivate. It now shows up in 'my comp'.

    (The two comps are identical, except for some software differences, same mobo, vid card, memory, XPP-64)

    Why would this happen? The drive has a bunch of vids, and a whole bunch of mp3 files. I can copy them to somewhere else & reformat etc the drive. What would be the best option for the newly reformatted drive? So I dont have this issue again.

    Ha! simple, foreign, dynamic, primary, etc, whats the best route?

    -c-
    According to Microsoft, dynamic disks should appear as Foreign when they are added to a system that supports using them, and need to be reactivated to bring them back online. A system running XP Pro 64-bit supports dynamic disks. Home editions of Windows don't support using dynamic disks and require using basic disks. There is more information about dynamic disks here https://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/windows/xp/all/proddocs/en-us/sag_di....mspx?mfr=true

    You must have formatted the HDD as a dynamic disk at some point, perhaps by mistake. The following article contains instructions about converting a dynamic disk back to a basic disk. You need to back up the data because you must reformat the HDD. https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/309044
    Last edited by usually_quiet; 26th Apr 2016 at 12:23.
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    Try a different enclosure and different USB port(s).
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  6. ½ way to Rigel 7 cornemuse's Avatar
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    Originally Posted by lingyi View Post
    Try a different enclosure and different USB port(s).
    I connect it to the computer via SATA (ESATA plug on back of computer) I use USB case/connection to connect to the media player.

    I am running XPP 64 bit.

    -c-

    (edit I read usually_quiet's 2 MS links, I tried all this stuff, stopped short of re-formatting drv. The drives in 'Q' have only been on XPPro - 64 computers. I have never had 2000 or vista or 8 or 8.?)
    Last edited by cornemuse; 27th Apr 2016 at 10:21. Reason: feng shui
    Yes, no, maybe, I don't know, Can you repeat the question?
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    Originally Posted by cornemuse View Post
    (edit I read usually_quiet's 2 MS links, I tried all this stuff, stopped short of re-formatting drv. The drives in 'Q' have only been on XPPro - 64 computers. I have never had 2000 or vista or 8 or 8.?)
    XP Pro 64-bit can format hard drives as dynamic disks. It is not unlike those other Windows Professional versions in that respect. People using any of the Home versions of Windows can only create Basic discs, and will probably never experience your problem.

    Dynamic drives are supposed to be permanently installed, not moved around between computers. If you do move HDDs that were formatted as dynamic disk between computers and use them with your media player, you should expect the results that you are seeing.

    Trying a different enclosure or a different USB port is a waste of time. You formatted your external HDDs incorrectly. If you don't want to deal with this problem anymore, format all your external HDDs as Basic disks.
    Last edited by usually_quiet; 27th Apr 2016 at 12:52. Reason: removed typo, clarity
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    [QUOTE=usually_quiet;2443080]
    Originally Posted by cornemuse View Post
    Trying a different enclosure or a different USB port is a waste of time. You formatted your external HDDs incorrectly. If you don't want to deal with this problem anymore, format all your external HDDs as Basic disks.
    It does seem that the OP did incorrectly format his drive as dynamic in the beginning and since he's using eSATA that eliminate USB as an issue.

    However, I'm on WIN 7 and I recently had some really odd issues with a couple of my USB 3.0 docks that would show drives as dynamic, RAW or initialize in Device Manager despite being perfectly fine in another dock.

    I restored an older image of my OS (pre-issues) and no change. I then put in a new USB 3.0 card and one of the docks works fine there and put the other dock on USB 2.0 and it's happy there. *SIGH*
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  9. Originally Posted by cornemuse View Post
    I connect it to the computer via SATA (ESATA plug on back of computer) I use USB case/connection to connect to the media player.

    I am running XPP 64 bit.

    -c-

    (edit I read usually_quiet's 2 MS links, I tried all this stuff, stopped short of re-formatting drv. The drives in 'Q' have only been on XPPro - 64 computers. I have never had 2000 or vista or 8 or 8.?)
    Have you tried mounting the drive using Knoppix? If Knoppix can't mount it, the drive is toast. But a drive has to be truly dead for Knoppix to fail mounting the drive. Regardless, at this point, I would be suspicious that the data is corrupted which leaves two options:

    1. The data is already backed up. Forget trying to mount it, and format it to see if that salvages the drive.
    2. The data is not backed up. Try to mount using Knoppix, copy the data, then reformat.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1zNdw4DaUM8
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  10. ½ way to Rigel 7 cornemuse's Avatar
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    Originally Posted by usually_quiet View Post
    Originally Posted by cornemuse View Post
    (edit I read usually_quiet's 2 MS links, I tried all this stuff, stopped short of re-formatting drv. The drives in 'Q' have only been on XPPro - 64 computers. I have never had 2000 or vista or 8 or 8.?)
    XP Pro 64-bit can format hard drives as dynamic disks. It is not unlike those other Windows Professional versions in that respect. People using any of the Home versions of Windows can only create Basic discs, and will probably never experience your problem.

    Dynamic drives are supposed to be permanently installed, not moved around between computers. If you do move HDDs that were formatted as dynamic disk between computers and use them with your media player, you should expect the results that you are seeing.

    Trying a different enclosure or a different USB port is a waste of time. You formatted your external HDDs incorrectly. If you don't want to deal with this problem anymore, format all your external HDDs as Basic disks.
    This explains things succinctly, I will access/check if theres anything I want to keep, & reformat as basic.

    Thanks,

    -c-
    Yes, no, maybe, I don't know, Can you repeat the question?
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  11. ½ way to Rigel 7 cornemuse's Avatar
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    Finally transfered what I wanted to keep & converted this drive to 'basic', all is well.

    Dont know what I was thinking, selecting 'dynamic', , , know better, now, ,

    -c-
    Yes, no, maybe, I don't know, Can you repeat the question?
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