HDD being read as USB, 2tb

aknsea

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Apr 15, 2013
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Hi all,

I have an interesting situation. I have a Seagate 2.2 tb hard drive that is now being read by Win 7 as a USB drive. It spins up okay, but if I have it connected to the MB, the boot halts at initializing USB drivers. Then when I unplug it, the system boots.

I have downloaded the Seagate Seatools for Windows and it recognizes it as USB 1394, it is hooked into an ESata hard drive dock. Previously it would not be recognized attached to the main Sata ports on my MB, an MSI 890gx.

Does anyone have any suggestions? I am wondering if the MBR is overwritten somehow with a USB one?

This is not a system drive, but a storage drive with lots of data I would like to retain.

Is there a program that you might suggest to restore a backup index file or NTFS file index and return it to HDD recognition?

Thank you,

Arlie
 
I think here is a misunderstanding here. "USB 1394" only tells you that the external case (usb OR firewire OR esata) was recognized. The disk has the same filesystem and the mbr is only present on a bootable drive. To be honest: i think your disk is dead and that's why it interrupts the boot process.
 

aknsea

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Apr 15, 2013
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Thanks for your reply noidea_77

I am still trying to revive it.

I am used to drive going bad with the click of death. Yet, this one spins up fine, so that is why I am wondering if the NTFS table can be repaired?

I imagine there are many other ways for the drive to die.

I am going to reattach it to the MB and see if I can find a bootable program that can restore the NTFS MFT. I just learned that the NTFS index is called a MFT, Master File Table.

Once again, the Seagate SeaTools does at least show a drive, hooked to USB 1394, which noidea_77 mentioned is the ESata HDD dock, while other partition software is not recognizing the drive. The drive does pass the basic tests.

If anyone has some ideas that may help, I would sure welcome them.

Thank you,

Arlie
 

popatim

Titan
Moderator
more often its the bridge chip, the part that converts the usb/fireware signalling to sata and back, that fails. Grab yourself another external enclosure or remove the drive from the seagate enclosure and mount it internally like a normal drive. Then you can troubleshoot just the drive itself and using normal pc tools.
 

aknsea

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Apr 15, 2013
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Thank you, Popatim,

I did hook it up directly to a motherboard sata port. I still gets halted at USB initializing.

When I unplug the sata cable then the boot finishes. I tried then to plug in the drive, but it still is not recognized. I did try to rescan for drives in partitioning software with no luck. I may try to purchase a new logic board for this drive.

Arlie
 

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