Corrupt drive, hardware seems ok - everything but Diskpart reports good!?!

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bhendin

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Dec 14, 2005
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This is a really strange situation that I just can't explain.

I had a 3TB sata drive connected via a usb " drive dock". It somehow got corrupted in that it was reporting as RAW, and nothing I was able to do could save my data in a usable way.

After reinitializing (GPT) and reformatting the drive as a single 3TB NTFS partition (what it was before) I have done the following:
- Checked SMART status
- Done chkdsk
- Extended verify test with HDDScan
- Quick surface test with SeaTools

All of these tests came back 100% ok. Additionally, Windows Explore and Disk Management properly show the drive at 3TB.

This was all very concerning because I couldn't really figure out how the drive corrupted to the extent it did when seemingly the drive is completely normal.

Then, I ran Diskpart. Diskpart incorrectly lists the the DISK SIZE as 746 GB.
I stress disk size, because when I view the partition info on that disk it shows the partition as 2794 GB.
That's right - somehow I have a partition almost 4 times larger than the reported disk size!
The 3rd party program "testdisk" reports similar - so I know it isn't just a diskpart issue.

The issue would seem to clearly be this USB drive dock, because when I use an external enclosure I have laying around instead then everything looks good (or I should say Diskpart/testdisk look good - since everything else looked good with the dock too).

My conundrum is this:

I can throw the dock away and write is off as bad - and that it is the reason that my drive got corrupted. But how is one to explain that with the exception of resorting to Diskpart (an arguably "under the cover" tool), there is no way I would have known there *might* have been an issue?

After all - Windows still shows the drive as good, all the disk check/surface check/SMART tools found the disk and reported it in good working order!

I don't recall exactly how much data I had written to this disk when it went corrupt - but I'm guessing that once it hit ~750 GB, it somehow started wrapping the data perhaps and corrupting the disk?

I don't know - I've just never seen diskpart report the wrong disk size before, especially a size smaller than what the usable partition shows.

ideas?
 
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ArtPog

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Sep 17, 2014
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It is a curious situation.

1. What's the make/model of the 3 TB HDD? Has this problem you've experienced occurred from the first time you used the drive? Or did the drive become "corrupted" sometime after it operated perfectly fine?

2. And it was only after the drive was installed in the "docking station" and utilized in that device that this problem seemed to occur? What's the make/model of the docking station BTW?

3. The 746 GB that Diskpart reports obviously represents the unallocated disk-space of a 3 TB HDD when that size disk is MBR-partitioned. I assume you're aware of that. I only mention that to wonder whether there could have been some weird partitioning scheme(s) involving MBR-GPT affecting the disk at some prior time.

4. While we've run into problems with this or that "docking station" from time-to-time it always involved some mechanical/electical problem with the device so that it didn't properly function, but we've never experienced the specific kind of problem you've experienced with a drive.

5. It really would be desirable (for diagnostic curiosity purposes) if you could install the docking station & the 3 TB HDD in another system. But I suppose that would not be practical for you.

6. I really can't shed any light on the issue you experienced so forgive me for that. I would be interested, however, if you ever do learn the cause of the problem.
 
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bhendin

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It is a Seagate ST3000DM01



I have only used this drive in this docking station. It was working fine for a couple months at least.
The drive got corrupted during normal usage (was extracting a large archive from another drive onto it).
After that point, even after reformatting the drive I continued to get this issue.

I have only ever used this drive in this station for any practical purpose.
The docking station is a Thermaltake BlacX ST0005U-C



I think what you are saying here is that if I chose to initialize it as an MBT I could only use 2TB? thus I would have 746GB remaining that would be unusable? If so, yes I get it...but still doesn't make much sense.

I can't be 100% sure because I wasn't closely analyzing it - but I'm pretty sure it all stated it was listed GPT in the correct places.

Remember - the OS was showing a 3TB formatted partition.
Also, by the simple act of substituting the docking station for the enclosure (just a separate SATA to USB interface) the problem went away.


[/quotemsg]

Re #5 - Maybe I wasn't clear in the OP, but I did do this.
On both System A and System B, the results were the same. Namely:
The disk showed up strange in Diskpart when using the docking station.
The disk showed up normal in Diskpart when using the enclosure.

Apart from the fact that Diskpart/Testdisk was reporting things strangely with the docking station, everything else from Explorer to thorough surface tests showed no issues in either case.

It is *only* because I had this unexpected drive failure (coupled with the fact that I get the strange info) that has caused me to say the docking station is faulty.

I am trying to get my hands on a replacement model of the same docking station. Once I have that I am going to take the drive out of the enclosure and test it in both docking stations.

If I continue to get the issue in the original docking station, but it is resolved in the new one - then I think that 100% proves the docking station is bad. If that's the case - it is still worrisome that a disk can report functioning at such a low level and yet still apparently not be interfacing properly.
 
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ArtPog

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"I think what you are saying here is that if I chose to initialize it as an MBT I could only use 2TB? thus I would have 746GB remaining that would be unusable? If so, yes I get it...but still doesn't make much sense."

Actually that wasn't the point of my comment. It's just that I found it curious that the 746 GB of disk-space Diskpart was reporting is precisely the amount of unallocated disk-space of a 3 TB HDD when it's MBR-partitioned. Why that volume of disk-space would be reported by Diskpart is simply a puzzle to me and in some unfathomable (to me!) way was somehow associated (or pointed to) a MBR-GPT partitioning issue.

Sorry...I did neglect to note that you had indicated that you tested the drive in a USB external enclosure.

I suppose everything does point to a defective docking station resulting in those somewhat weird results. Trust you'll let us know the results with its replacement.
 
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bhendin

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I think we are saying the same thing here :).
As MBR has a 2TB limit, the remaining space on the 3TB drive would not be able to be used (unallocated).
I'll trust you that 746GB is the precise number, as I am already re-utilizing the drive and so can't play around with it to that extent.

Will probably be about a week until I get the replacement - so will be interesting to see what we get.

 
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alceryes

alceryes

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Most (all?) external USB enclosures have a SATA drive in the enclosure. With this SATA drive there is also a small bridge card that converts (or encapsulates) the ATA protocol data into the USB protocol. Some of these bridge cards can handle the 2.2TB limit just fine, others can't. I'm guessing that's the weirdness you are experiencing.
If you want to hook it directly to a computer's SATA interface you'll need to initialize it with GPT instead of MBR. If you want to boot from a GPT disk you're system needs to support UEFI.
 
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bhendin

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So it looks as if the issue is definitely some sort of weirdness with the particular dock.
As others have mentioned, this dock apparently can't support over 2TB drives. While the manufacturer packaging and documentation state no such limit, I have found a few product postings which state this limit.

That's all well and good - I realize that some older docks don't support the AF/512e/4K drives.
However, if a dock doesn't support the drive size I would expect one of two things, either:
1) The drive won't work at all (be recognized)
2) The drive will only be recognized for the amount of space it *can* support. IOW my 3TB drive would only show 2TB usable.

Unfortunately - and why this is such a weird situation - is that according to every single utility *except diskpart* this drive was perfectly fine. Windows Explorer and Disk Management reported a healthy functional 3TB drive and GPT partition.
Several disk management and surface testing tools all gave it a pass.

Diskpart would show the drive as the following (Drive 8):
bad.png

Note that it shows the drive as only 746GB with a 3GB partition. With the exception of the drive itself showing up smaller here, there was zero indication there was a problem - that is until data loss occurred.

To the contrary - this is how the drive looked when connected either using a second USB enclosure (one that can support up to 6GB drives) *OR* when using the bad dock with its eSATA interface instead of its USB one.
good.png


My personal belief is Windows is clearly not handling this properly. For one, it is reporting a different disk size through Disk Management then with Diskpart. Second, it is allowing a partition to be created larger than the detected size (according to Diskpart). While I understand that incompatible hardware exists, the fact that Windows would allow you to "plug and play" a drive like this with all indications of operations is a horrible and scary thing.

I will never again trust the Windows Disk Management tool after this.
 
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