Jim wrote:
On 19/02/2014 03:14, Jim wrote:
On 18/02/2014 15:09, Jim wrote:
On 18/02/2014 14:53, Paul wrote:
Jim wrote:
On 18/02/2014 13:13, Jim wrote:
On 18/02/2014 12:22, Jim wrote:
On 18/02/2014 12:13, Jim wrote:
On 17/02/2014 18:23, Flasherly wrote:
On Mon, 17 Feb 2014 11:46:28 -0500,
wrote:
All I can suggest at this point, is to think carefully about
any changes made recently. Like BIOS changes just before
it could no longer mount.
Why I like "the idea" of coming off a docking station, so far as
setting up a drive. My largest DS firmware support being 2T, I've
certainly aways to go [w/out a 3T drive to my name], although
being
USB, there should be a layer [of USB transpostions, i.e., from
within
the station's firmware] non-specifically addressed to the MB's
BIOS;-
interesting distinction how that differs from an added SATA
port my
stations haven't.
Anyways, slap up that baby upside any ol' USB2/3 port, a baseline
compliancy, and the given software/OS originally used to
establish the
drive's geometry [reported to the OS] theoretically should be
good to
go to work.
Well i do have an IcyBox IB-RD4320STU3 so i will give that a
bash later and see if i can get any joy from that route.
Jim
OK well after putting the drive in the enclosure and booting it
up in win7 it was not showing up in windows explorer at all so i
went to disk management and it wasasking me to initialize the
disk with eityher MBR or GPT at this point i bottled it as dont
want to write anything to the drive yet, i do have my new 3TB
black here right now so i'm going to try to clone the broken 3tb
onto the new one so i can at least have a back up of it if i do
something silly, I may look at ebay and get a different kind of
docking station as to be honest the icybox i would not class as a
dockling station myself.
Jim
Well thought the best thing was to put new drive inline and let
windows format it the way it wants to but oh no, went GPT route
and now it is now showing as 764.39GB, guys i'm begining to wonder
if my motherboard could be the issue here, i dont know why, sure
it's an older model Asus P5E3 Premium @ wifi
https://www.asus.com/Motherboards/P5E3_PremiumWiFiAP_n
Anyone got a gun?
Jim
I have been thinking about this and was wondering could it be the
drives themselves? Reason i'm think this is i have bought the newer
version of the drive the AF format (WD3003FZEX instead of older
WD3001FAEX drive) I was told there was no real difference but who
knows?
http://wd.com/en/products/products.aspx?id=760
Jim
Nope. I suggested Clearing CMOS as a cure.
Or, using Load Default Settings in the BIOS,
as an easier substitute. You will then need
to load any custom settings later (disable
peripheral chips, load custom RAM settings,
overclocks etc). If you've never ever used
custom settings, accepted the default IDE emulation
mode etc., then you'd have virtually nothing
additional to do.
There's no geometry in the MBR sector. There is
definitely geometry in the four primary partition
entry area, but that doesn't influence the overall
drive size. The BIOS can read the max_address out
of the drive, and convert it to a fake CHS. And in
Linux, it would appear the parameters to fdisk, are
"fakes" to influence how the primary partitions
are set up, rather than overriding anything in
a permanent way. I think I may have used that,
so I could test WinXP on a 56 sector alignment.
(Prep disk in Linux, and transfer files over later.)
So all I can figure, is the BIOS is doing it. If
the 3TB drive had never worked properly, I'd just
say "toss the motherboard". But it did work at
one time, so keep the motherboard. Try clearing
the CMOS (with all power removed - unplug the computer).
The green LED on an Asus motherboard, should not be
lit while using the CMOS jumper. Wait at least 60
seconds after unplugging, before making any changes
inside the machine. That's to give time for +5VSB to
"drain". The computer continues to draw current from
it, which is why it will drain. Someone suggested
pushing the power button on the front, to encourage
draining, but I consider that to be overkill. The
supply might not act sanely, while such a transient
happens.
Paul
OK that's fine i'll do that this afternoon Paul, I have not reset the
bios in yonks and my bios is fairly standard apart from ACHI and
disableing sound etc so no overclcoking done here, i prefer stability
over performance, I'll post back later with an update.
Jim
P.S. Thanks for staying with me.
Well bios is still showing it as 801.6GB despite the fact i can see it
as 3TB in various boot discs i have picked up along the way (hirens
etc), I have scanned WD forum and tried what is mentioned here
http://community.wd.com/t5/Desktop-M...it/td-p/370397
but still coming up with 750 odd GB options even tried linux partition
app (sorry can't remember name it's 3am here) but coming into windows
still gives me 746.52GB Unallocated as i have not even bothered
formatting it.
I have a few more htings to try someone has mentioned about my bios
may be truncating (spelling) my drive so i have to run some tests on
that later but it's gone 3am here (London) and i'm dead so going to
call it a night I will post with some results later for you to have a
nose over.
Nite all
Jim
Well havng slept on it i thought i'd try something different and that
meant i'd hook up the new (empty) 3TB to my Adaptec RAID 1430SA
controller which i know supports 3TB drives, so booted into windows went
into Disk management and formatted perfectly, so then shut down and put
the new 3TB back onto the motherboaurds SATA controllers to see what the
bios would say and it's coming up again at 801.6GB so i'm sure some of
my problem come from my motherboard.
So i'm now going to hook up the original drive and see if i can image
that but to be honest i'm not sure if i can but worth a go, then i'll
hook that drive up to the raid controller and see if i can do any
recovery work on that.
Jim
As I said before, if all else were to fail, you can still locate the
start of the NTFS file system, and loopback mount it in Linux. All
the data should be there. Then, in Linux, you'd format the new
drive, and transfer the data over.
The loopback mount (-o loop), with appropriate offset, is a way to
pick off a file system when the header no longer points to it.
GPT stuff... mumble mumble NTFS_header ... NTFS_data
^
|
Set offset to here.
But both drives should still foul up in Windows again. Until the
mystery of where the errant geometry is coming from, is solved.
When I used that technique in Linux, I was able to mount the NTFS
partition above the 2TiB mark. Proving that offsets above 2TiB, work.
Data transfer was pretty slow (10MB/sec, versus the normal 135MB/sec
or better), but it's better than nothing.
If you fired up Linux and the drive was correctly identified
from the start, then you'd suspect that somehow, a drive overlay
got loaded in Windows. This is another thing that can work
under the hood. I don't know if they make a DDO to solve large
drive problems or not. You'll notice "Kroll Ontrack" is
mentioned in this article, and Ontrack software is typically provided
on disk manufacturer web sites (while they're still licensing and
paying Kroll for it).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_Drive_Overlay
Have a look at your Add/Remove, and see if you can figure out
what software was added to your computer, around the time
the geometry went to hell.
Paul