Formatting an external drive using different interfaces

[osRe]

Or use a different enclosure without the problem. That's a better solution, and more forward looking, than trying to find 512n drives.

[Dave-H]

Thanks guys!

I tried fitting the jumper, and it didn't help matters, in fact it seemed to make the drive more difficult to see via the USB interface, with a lot of power cycling before it was finally recognised.

I did wonder whether to leave it there if it would improve Windows XP compatibility, but I've taken it off for now.

 

I've tried playing around in Windows XP (off-topic for this forum, sorry) and I've now ended up with a full capacity primary partition on the drive when viewed through the USB interface.

 

However, when viewed (again in XP) through the eSATA interface, I have this reported by the Disk Manager.

 

 

It is of course total nonsense as the total size of the partitions reported is way above the actual capacity of the drive!

I formatted the reported 811.57 partition, and now have a drive of that size that I can access on eSATA.

I can still access the full drive via USB.

 

So, is this a viable configuration, or am I going to come to grief as soon as I start actually writing data to these drives?

[bphlpt]

If the drive is seen as a different size and/or formatting depending on which interface you use, I would strongly suggest you pick one, and only one, interface to use.  And if you are going to use the drive for XP, I would use USB since it appears you are able to use the full capacity of the drive.  Otherwise I believe the risk of losing data would be extremely high.

 

Cheers and Regads

Edited January 4, 2015 by bphlpt

[osRe]

I formatted the reported 811.57 partition, and now have a drive of that size that I can access on eSATA.

I can still access the full drive via USB.

 

So, is this a viable configuration, or am I going to come to grief as soon as I start actually writing data to these drives?

No, this is going to corrupt your data.

[Dave-H]

Yes, I thought that probably wouldn't be a viable way of working!

The chances of finding another enclosure with both eSATA and USB that would actually work with these Advanced Format drives are not good I would have thought.

There are plenty around with just USB interfaces of course, but the one I've got was the only one I could find at the time with eSATA as well, and I wanted that to get the extra transfer speed on my main machine, as I will be using the drive for video editing sometimes.

With the netbook USB is fine as it will only be used for system backups.

 

There may be other enclosures available now, but I decided to just buy a WD1002FAEX drive while I still could.

I got one in the UK for a reasonable price, although they are getting scarce, most places were out of stock.

As this isn't an Advanced Format drive I'm hoping that it will just work, as my previous drive did.

Fingers crossed, I'll let you know!

 

Thanks for all the help as always, I never anticipated that this would be a problem, especially an unresolvable one.

Something else to be aware of in the future, as I guess it won't be long before all available drives are Advanced Format.

I'm assuming that all SSDs already are, so I guess that wouldn't have been an option (assuming you can now get 1TB ones anyway of course).

Cheers, Dave.

[osRe]

It is possible some enclosures handle eSATA/USB just fine. Another option is USB3, which isn't much slower than eSATA.

Did you ask the enclosure's manufacturer for a fix? Even if they don't bother (likely), making the problem known is one step in the right direction.

Edited January 4, 2015 by shae

[NoelC]

I don't want to jump in and propose giving up on this (fascinating) problem, though you may be close to doing just that...

 

In the interest of practicality, what's your time worth?  At this point, I suspect you've put (too) many hours into this...  Maybe just getting another drive - e.g., a USB MyBook driver or something - so that both systems have their own backup drives might be worth considering?

 

Another possibility, if the systems are networked, might be to do backups through the network from one to the other.

 

I've had very good luck with leaving my backup drives just plugged-in essentially permanently.

 

-Noel

[dencorso]

The chances of finding another enclosure with both eSATA and USB that would actually work with these Advanced Format drives are not good I would have thought.

That was also my own reasoning.

 

There may be other enclosures available now, but I decided to just buy a WD1002FAEX drive while I still could. I got one in the UK for a reasonable price, although they are getting scarce, most places were out of stock.

As this isn't an Advanced Format drive I'm hoping that it will just work, as my previous drive did.

Fingers crossed, I'll let you know!

I really think you've taken the right decision. A non-AF HDD must look exactly the same through both interfaces, and you know that for sure, because that's how the previous HDD, which was not AF either (obviously, because they didn't even exist until quite recently), was seen. So I'm confident your decision is a winner. Even so, please, do keep us posted about how it develops.

[Dave-H]

I suspect that if I did tell the manufacturers of my enclosure about this problem they wouldn't be particularly interested.

It would only apply to enclosures with dual interfaces anyway, and the vast majority I've seen are USB only.

Hopefully newer enclosures will take this potential problem into account, especially now that Advanced Format is becoming standard, but I suspect the makers tend to assume that you will be only using one connection option anyway, not both, so it's not an issue.

[jaclaz]

It is possible (but highly unlikely) that there is available the "Manufacturer Tool" to change the behaviour of the controller of the enclosure.

 

Still, what is unresolved is why that particular disk behaves in fsutil as 512n IF it is an AF drive (evidently of the 512e type).

 

Dave-H,

which EXACT disk was in the enclosure before?

what is the make/model of the enclosure?

 

With all due respect to all the people that suggested buying another disk, buying another external enclosure (or both) or changing the backup strategy/whatever, those are not solutions, nor workarounds to the actual specific issue, the suggestions are good and sound of course , but heck, the fun is (or should be) in finding out what exactly happens and have that specific hardware work, one way or the other.

 

@shae

I don't think that you can get that info on XP, the "feature" has been added to Windows 7 first (it is in the actual driver(s)) and actually a specific update may be needed, see :

http://www.symantec.com/business/support/index?page=content&id=TECH194586

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/982018/en-us

 

And (JFYI) this has some connections to the matter, it is a mess :

http://www.forensicfocus.com/Forums/viewtopic/t=11431/

 

jaclaz 

[Dave-H]

The old drive was a Hitachi HDS721010KLA330, which was originally in my Sky+ satellite PVR.

The enclosure I'm using is a NL-HD29 made by Newlink.

Edited January 5, 2015 by Dave-H

[NoelC]

With all due respect to all the people that suggested buying another disk, buying another external enclosure (or both) or changing the backup strategy/whatever, those are not solutions, nor workarounds to the actual specific issue, the suggestions are good and sound of course , but heck, the fun is (or should be) in finding out what exactly happens and have that specific hardware work, one way or the other. 

 

Agreed, though a labor of love (noting that I wrote "fascinating" and meant it) can turn into an unacceptable nuisance.

 

I've been there, done that too.  Near 10 years ago I had a "workstation class" video card from nVidia, in the time of Vista, that cost me a small fortune (well over $1000).  It worked okay with a single monitor, accelerating Vista nicely, but it would never quite work right with the two monitors I needed to use.  I fought and fought to combine driver versions and settings and system tweaks to try to get my system stable, and I did get close a few times, but my computing experience basically sucked for a month, with virtually everything being unreliable and having miscellaneous failures of all kinds.  Finally, in exasperation, went to the local high tech store, and bought a newly released ATI "gamer" card for about 1/10 what I had paid for the nVidia card, and voila, my system changed from a nightmare to something that just worked, and was even just about as fast.  Such is the speed of advancement of high tech.

 

Moral of the story:  Even a challenge a geek like us can love can change into an annoyance after a point, and we are occasionally pleasantly surprised when new, affordable technology comes along that just eclipses the path we've chosen.

 

-Noel

[dencorso]

I do agree with NoelC. More than that, I think all involved are old enough in this game to be able to infer reasonably well (that'd be more than "common sense"... let's call it "geek grade gut-feeling") when such endeavor is bound to become a sea of sorrow, and when there's a minimal chance of all-out success, even if at relatively high cost (in time and effort). Knowing when to avoid confronting a challenge is priceless, and can result in the avoidance of much needless annoyance. Sometimes, lateral thinking (like slicing the "Gordian knot") just works, and can be much more blissful than actually solving the challenge met head-on. Just my 2¢, of course!

[Dave-H]

I should be getting my new drive tomorrow!

[Dave-H]

Well my new drive arrived, and I put it in, and was presented with exactly the same problem!

 

I won't bore you all with the details of the subsequent few hours I spent trying to find what was wrong, as when I finally checked the obvious I found that I'd actually been sent a different drive from the one I ordered.

 

I ordered a WD1002FAEX, which was clearly specified on all the order documentation, but what they'd actually sent was a WD1003FZEX.

The latter is, of course, an Advanced Format drive!

 

I will ring them tomorrow, but I'm fully expecting them to say that they haven't actually got any WD1002FAEX drives, and simply sent the WD1003FZEX as a substitute. Of course 99 times out of 100 it would have been a perfectly acceptable substitute, but not this time!