4TB Internal hard drive removed from USB casing doesn't show up in Windows.

Davey Mames · Nov 12, 2013

I have a 4TB Hitachi Touro DX3 USB 3.0 drive used on Windows 7 64-bit. It's NTFS and it's working fine and I've got files on it. However when I remove the drive from the casing and use it as an internal SATA III hard drive on my motherboard, no partition appears (it appears with no file system when I look at the properties of the drive). Why is that? I have to format it before the partition will appear but of course I will lose all the files already on the drive.

Without formatting, if I reconnect via USB then the partition appears and my files are still there.

The internal drive name shows in Windows as "Hitachi HDS5C4040ALE630".

Formatting it is a problem because I've got lots of full USB 3.0 hard drives that I want to disassemble and use as eSATA SATA III drives. Rather than plugging them in and they work, I would have to copy all the drive contents to other formatted drives which would take ages.

All the drives are just data drives, they do NOT contain the Windows installation on it.

RealBeast · Nov 12, 2013

Many USB drives have encryption hardware in their circuitry, and when you use it outside the external housing the data will not be accessible.

Davey Mames · Nov 12, 2013

Hitachi never mentioned that when I spoke to them so I don't think the drive has encryption.

fzabkar · Nov 12, 2013

Hitachi's datasheet states that the product is compatible with Windows XP. Unless Hitachi is providing some special driver (eg Paragon's GPT driver), then this means that the external enclosure must be configured with a 4KB sector size, or similar.

http://www.hgst.com/sites/default/files/pdfs/TouroDesk_3.0_datasheet_0812_LR.pdf

You could verify this by executing the following command at a Windows CMD prompt:

fsutil fsinfo ntfsinfo X:

... where X is the drive letter.

FireWire2 · Nov 12, 2013

Davey Mames :

I had the same problem as you have, drive me crazy for days.

After days of investigate the problem - I bought one if this.
Now can can read ANY HDD with data from ANY USB3.0 external drive.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B006427OW0

There is something in the USB adapter, that makes straight SATA interfaces wont readable

Davey Mames · Nov 13, 2013

fzabkar :

Should I do that when the drive is connected via USB or when it's used as an internal hard drive?

Davey Mames · Nov 13, 2013

FireWire2 :

What does the adapter do exactly?

FireWire2 · Nov 13, 2013

This Seagate adapter allows me to read the existing data from HDD taking from > 2TB USB external enclosures.

I think it has an embedded 4K advanced format (4AF) scheme, like other > 2TB USB enclosures. This 4AF lets a 32bit OS like WinXP sees 4TB HDD. So without it, like straight SATA connection, your system wont able to read the existing data, because the reference point of LBA is not the same.

Note: this only applies to HDD greater than 2TB

sora · Nov 13, 2013

Davey Mames :

I think you plug a cable into your harddrive and into the adapter into the computer that will make your HDD readable. I'm not completely sure though.

fzabkar · Nov 13, 2013

Run fsutil against the drive when it is inside the enclosure. I suspect that it will report a 4096-byte physical sector size.

As for what the enclosure does, it incorporates a USB-SATA bridge IC. The bridge firmware inside the enclosure communicates with the host's USB controller using 4KB LBAs and a SCSI command set.

The bridge then breaks up each 4KB LBA into eight 512e sectors, and the HDD reassembles them internally as a single 4KB pysical sector.

USB host <-- USB, 4KB, SCSI --> bridge firmware <-- SATA, 512e --> HDD (4KB physical sectors)

As you can see, there are two levels of translation.

Seagate and WD do it this way is to maintain compatibility with legacy operating systems such as Windows XP which are limited to 32-bit LBAs. I presume your Hitachi drive is similarly configured.

FireWire2 · Nov 13, 2013

fzabkar :

Run fsutil against the drive when it is inside the enclosure. I suspect that it will report a 4096-byte physical sector size.

As for what the enclosure does, it incorporates a USB-SATA bridge IC. The bridge firmware inside the enclosure communicates with the host's USB controller using 4KB LBAs and a SCSI command set.

The bridge then breaks up each 4KB LBA into eight 512e sectors, and the HDD reassembles them internally as a single 4KB pysical sector.

USB host <-- USB, 4KB, SCSI --> bridge firmware <-- SATA, 512e --> HDD (4KB physical sectors)

As you can see, there are two levels of translation.

Seagate and WD do it this way is to maintain compatibility with legacy operating systems such as Windows XP which are limited to 32-bit LBAs. I presume your Hitachi drive is similarly configured.

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4TB Internal hard drive removed from USB casing doesn't show up in Windows.

Davey Mames

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RealBeast

Titan

Davey Mames

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fzabkar

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FireWire2

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Davey Mames

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Davey Mames

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FireWire2

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sora

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fzabkar

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FireWire2

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