Dave-H

Don't worry @bphlpt I'm sure @jaclaz will publish all the information once we've finished experimenting! @jaclaz, everything seems to be generally working fine, but observations below. I'm getting the UAC prompt on the eSATA connected machine, but not on the USB connected machine. I'm still getting the prompt on XP on both machines. Thanks for that, I'm sure people would have been caught out by it!

Does that only apply if Windows Update is completely disabled? I have it set to notify me of updates but not to download or install them, and I have installed free apps from the Windows Store and it's worked fine.

Hi again jaclaz. I've checked out my "new" WD1002FAEX drive, and all seems well with it. I've used it to back up both my Windows 8.1 systems and I've now put it to one side and re-connected the Advanced Format drive. Firstly I must apologise yet again for being really stupid! The reason why the drive wasn't being converted using your command line on the USB interface was simply because although I changed the drive letters to be correct for the USB connected machine, I forgot that I also needed to change as512.bss to as4kb.bss on the command line! It does now work using the appropriate commands on both machines. It is still only putting up the UAC prompt on the eSATA connected machine though, not the USB connected machine. The other strange difference is that the conversion and detection by Explorer of the new drive is immediate on the USB machine, whereas on the eSATA machine nothing seems to happen once the UAC prompt is dismissed until I actually open Explorer At that point, but not before, the new drive appears.

I don't think that the person I bought the drive from on eBay is the person who it originally belonged to. How the drive got into the seller's hands I have no idea, but there seems to be no connection.

Just to update, I received my "new" WD1002FAEX drive today, and I've put it in the enclosure to test it. I was quite taken aback to find that it still contained the entire contents of someone else's computer, including all their pictures, videos, and music files! I actually think that's right out or order, selling on a hard drive with someone else's data still on it without re-formatting it, or at least deleting the partitions. I will be contacting the person i bought it from to tell them this. There was nothing sinister on it I'm glad to say, but even so I think this it's wrong on principle! The drive seems to work fine, and as expected/hoped, it works as a normal drive identically using both interfaces with both computers. I'm quite happy to carry on doing the testing with the Advanced Format drive, so do feel free to carry on with this jaclaz!

I installed them all today on two completely different machines, both 32 bit with IE8, and no problems so far (touch wood!) Why would you think that this month's updates would be any more problematic than any previous ones using the hack?

Hi bphlpt. Both interfaces are physically connected at the same time, but there is a switch on the enclosure to select one or the other, and I've been assuming (perhaps wrongly!) that when one is selected the other is isolated. I've not seen any behaviour so far to contradict that.

Sorry if this is something obvious that I should have mentioned earlier, but could the different behaviour on the two machines be anything to do with the fact that the eSATA connected 8.1 is 64 bit and the USB connected 8.1 is 32 bit?

Thanks den. jaclaz, when I run your command line using the eSATA connection it seems to work fine, although there seems to be quite a bit of delay before the drive is actually mounted after dismissing the UAC prompt. If I run it on the USB connected machine however, I just get a message "OK, written 4096 bytes at offset 0", but the drive is not activated. No UAC prompt either, which there is on the eSATA connected machine. All in Windows 8.1 of course with non-elevated command prompts. Is that what you would expect?

Oops, sorry I must have done it in an elevated command prompt (I have the shortcut set to do that automatically). This should be better! J:\>dsfi \\.\I: 0 0 as512.bss\\.\I: - Access is denied.J:\>ECHO Errorlevel is %ERRORLEVEL%Errorlevel is 1J:\>

Hi again jaclaz, sorry for the delay but MSFN seems to have been down for the last few hours. I ran that batch in a command prompt and got this - J:\>dsfi \\.\I: 0 0 as512.bssOK, written 4096 bytes at offset 0J:\>ECHO Errorlevel is %ERRORLEVEL%Errorlevel is 0J:\>J: is the drive where your files are, and I: is the drive I'm mounting. I hope that's right.

Yes, it works if you do that of course! I've now checked it out with Windows XP and Windows 8.1 using both interfaces and I'm glad to report that everything now seems to be working fine! The UAC prompt comes up on 8.1 and has to be given the OK, which is fine. The prompt on XP isn't so convenient as you have to deselect the "Protect my computer..." option every time, but it's no big deal. One thing I should mention is that with the addition of elevate.exe the 68KB drive is now showing a red bar in 8.1 as it's nearly full. Maybe it could do with being a bit bigger. The next thing of course, is how do I get access to the rest of my 1TB drive? Presumably the .bss files determine the size of the partitions. Will you need a different one for every drive to make the second partition the size you want?

Well it all seems to be about touch-screen smartphones and tablets now, those of us who obstinately want to carry on using "proper" computers are obviously now just an afterthought. Launching Windows 8 with no way of sorting the start screen tiles apart from manually dragging them around was a prime example of this madness. This probably didn't matter to the target audience who just had tiles for Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Instagram, but for the rest of us who actually really use their computers rather than just play with them, this was an absolute nightmare. I can't believe that the beta testers didn't tell MS hundreds of times that they shouldn't release Windows 8 like that, but did they listen? No, they knew best, but then had to hastily fix it in Windows 8.1! I use Classic Start menu, which is the only thing that makes Windows 8/8.1 usable as far as I'm concerned, and thank goodness for it. It's one of those programs that's so good you can't believe that it's actually free! What would it have cost MS to put similar functionality into the OS in the first place?!

Thanks a lot for doing that Noel. I wonder why the "Personal Videos" option isn't there in Windows 10, very strange. Anyway, that seems to confirm that this behaviour is "by design", and it really is rubbish! I'm just amazed that when I searched for information about this, absolutely nothing came up about it. Surely others must have noticed that it's not working as it should do! Another thing I've noticed is that if you remove all the videos from the library, although the app puts up an error message if you try to play them, they are all still displayed on the Personal Videos page, and there seems to be no way of removing them other than by manually deleting the thumbnail files and the app's database folders and starting again. Really, really rubbish!

Tried with the new elevate.exe and the modified entry in switcher.cmd, in XP using the USB interface. Now when I enter "YES" a "runas" box pops up asking me what user account I want to run it under. If I say OK to the default current user entry the box goes away and a new (apparently empty) prompt pops up, and both prompts then disappear, but the drive hasn't been switched.

Tried that, and when I go to the USB interface in Windows XP and enter "YES" to convert the drive a message pops up saying "elevate.exe is not a valid Win32 application". I am definitely using the 32 bit version of elevate.exe.

Thanks Noel. All you need to do is to temporarily add your videos folder to your Windows video library if they're not there already, and then when you run the app it should import them. I'd just be interested to know what order it displays them in, and whether the sort selection option at the top of the page actually does what it says it should! Cheers, Dave.

I've tried using the 32 bit version of elevate.exe, with the same result. Running "elevate.exe -c -w dsfi \\.\I: 0 0 as512.bss" from a non-elevated command prompt does work. The batch file apparently does nothing when it's run. I've tried changing the line at the end of switcher.cmd simply to - IF "YES"=="%Confirm%" elevate.exe -c -w dsfi \\.\%SecondDriveLetter% 0 0 %Source% &GOTO :Check That seems to work, although you have to OK the UAC prompt each time, both in the eSATA connection and the USB connection. Not too much of a problem, as it does now finally work OK, at least in Windows 8.1. Haven't tried it in Windows XP yet..........

Still getting "Access is denied" I'm afraid. I am using the 64bit version of elevate.exe BTW. Looking at what you've written, is this not just running dsfi with elevated permissions? I'm not sure that's the problem, I think it's the actual disk access that needs higher permissions, not the dsfi command.

I ran "dsfi \\.\I: 0 0 as512.bss" in an elevated command prompt when in the J: drive where your files are, and it worked, and I can now access drive I: and its contents are intact. So, it looks as if it's just that the switcher command needs administrative powers. Right clicking on the switcher.cmd file and selecting "Run as administrator" seems to work fine. You don't seem to have to do this when using the USB interface. So, can we say now that this is a success?! EDIT: Spoke slightly too soon. Going back to the eSATA interface, if I run switcher.cmd as an administrator, it is OK until I enter "YES" to switch the drive back, but I then get - "dsfi is not a recognised command". I've tried selling dsfi to be always run as an administrator, but that made no difference. Entering the command line from an already open administrative prompt still works. EDIT: In fact I've just spotted the obvious, running switcher.cmd as an administrator does not open an administrative command prompt, it opens a normal one!

Ah, sorry jaclaz, I wasn't expecting that the commands would be case sensitive! Done it again using upper case and everything seems to have worked fine with both machines in XP. I can now access the 98MB partition through either interface just by running the switcher command when I change from one to the other. Now off to try it in Windows 8.1........ EDIT: OK, back again. With the machines booted into 8.1, everything is fine on the USB interface (which is how I left it) with both drives and their contents accessible. On the eSATA interface however I can access the drive with your files on it, but when I run the switcher command and enter "YES" I get an "access is denied" message so I can't switch modes to see the other drive, which reports unformatted.

Right, have run the dsfi command again, and got two entries in Explorer as expected. One is a 68KB drive I: and contains the four files. The other is J: and is reported as un-formatted. Looking in Disk Management the drive now has a 98MB partition marked as drive J: which is a logical drive filling an extended partition, and the rest is Unallocated. Does that sound as expected? I ran the switcher.cmd and got this - The disk has been mounted as 512 bytes/sectorThis batch has determined that the first partition on disk withDiskSignature=050C9655has assigned the following VolumeID/Drive Letter:Volume{5607c183-98f3-11e4-8268-00304879f908}=I:While the second partition has the following:Volume{5db4a84f-98d7-11e4-8267-00304879f908}=J:In order to make J: accessible you need to fix the bootsector.You need to type YES to confirm:Typing "yes" and pressing enter just makes the prompt close, but nothing seems to have changed. EDIT: Just went back into 8.1, and the new drives are not visible in Explorer. More worryingly, the Disk Management is showing the drive differently (with the same eSATA interface). It's showing a 98MB primary partition with no drive letter, with the rest unallocated. This matches what Windows XP displayed in terms of partition sizes, but not type. This may mean that this will not work on multi-boot systems, as the different operating systems will see the drive differently.

Before going over to XP, I deleted the 98MB partition in Disk Management. It disappeared and was replaced with a 12MB partition, marked as "Free Space" (coloured green). I've deleted that as well, and I'll now try again in XP. EDIT: Just booted into XP, and the 68KB drive is still there in Explorer, with the four files still on it, although it isn't listed at all in Disk Management, which shows the drive as I left it in 8.1, completely unallocated! I'll delete it and start again. EDIT: OK, my next problem is how do I remove a drive that isn't visible in Disk Management?! EDIT: OK, deleted it using DISKPART!

Well I just had to go into Device Manager while trying to troubleshoot another problem, and found that there was a "generic volume" listed in the "other devices" section, with no drivers installed. I tried updating its drivers, and it found and installed a driver, and the entry disappeared. Tried the dsfi command again, and this time it apparently worked. I removed and replaced the disk (eSATA) and Disk Management is now showing a 98MB primary partition, but with no drive letter. The rest of the drive is still shown as Unallocated. There are no extra drives in the Explorer view. EDIT: Just tried rebooting, no difference. If I try to do anything with the 98MB partition in Disk Management, an error message pops up saying - "The operation did not complete because the Disk Management console view is not up to date. Refresh the view by using the refresh task. If the problem persists close the Disk Management console, then restart Disk Management or restart the computer." Neither option makes any difference.

OK, back again. I tried this first in Windows XP, simply because that was the OS I was in at the time, and it seemed to work as far as making the small partition with the necessary files on it. I then realised that I really should have been doing it in Windows 8.1 (being as we're in the 8.1 forum if for no other reason) and changed OS and tried again. Strangely, it doesn't seem to work in 8.1. Putting the same command in from the same folder as I did on XP, I now just get an error message - W:\Temp Folder>dsfi \\.\Physicaldrive5 0 0 dualmode.img \\.\Physicaldrive5 - The system cannot find the file specified. I've tried everything to try and find what the problem is, even tried copying the files to a different folder and trying, but with the same result. I'm not sure what it's saying it can't find, is it the image file, or is it the drive itself? Disk 5 is there in Disk Manager OK as 931.51 GB of unallocated space, as it was in XP. Any ideas? BTW I assume missing the "l" out of your command line was just a typo! Perhaps you should correct it for the future.