Barracuda XT, Barracuda, Barracuda Green, DiamondMax and other desktop SATA and IDE drives

[dodo123]

Dear Sir / Madam

I bought a Barracuda 7200.14 ST3000DM001 3.5" 3TB internal hard drive in April 2012 just 4 months ago.  Since yesterday,

when I click Start > Computer there is no narrow blue bar next to the letter name for the drive - in the computer explorer window.

In other words Windows just cannot see or access the data on the drive.  I have tried all sorts of ideas to solve this very dissapointing problem.  Fortunately, I have backed up my data on an extenal hard drive.

I feel like taking out the 3TB Barracuda and throwing it in the trash can.  Then going back to 2 TB drives and see how other suppliers price them - compared to Seagate.

With kind regards

Paul Clarke

[AskTheLeaf]

Does the drive show up in Control Panel > System > Disk Drives?

Have you taken a look at our external drive troubleshooter to see if the drive can be accessed again?

http://knowledge.seagate.com/articles/en_US/FAQ/212667en

[dodo123]

Dear AskTheLeaf

Under Control Panel>System and Security>System>Device Manager>Disk Drives the internal hard drive appears as ST3000DM001-9YN166.

When I right click this item and click Properties.  The Properties window says the device is working properly.  When I try to update the driver I am told that the latest driver for this device is being used.  Under Disk Manager the file system of the drive is displayed as "RAW" not NTFS.  When I try to format the drive under Disk Manager I am told that this cannot be done as the disk is being used.  Although I do not have any application using the drive.

When I first bought the drive I used Seagate’s Disk Wizard to access the extra third terabyte on the drive.  At that point Windows saw the drive with no problems.  However, a couple of days ago I installed Acronis True Image Home 2012.  It seems to me that the Extended Capacity Manager of Acronis Disk management has corrupted the disk.  I feel that the Master Boot Record of the disk has been corrupted.  (Although, I may be wrong.)  Either way Windows 7 is not happy with the disk at all and will not display the blue bar next to the letter name of the drive in the Computer Explorer window.

I feel like replacing this 3TB drive with a more conventional 2TB drive then uninstalling Acronis True Image 2012 and not using their application at all.

To recover from a disaster at the moment I think I would prefer to reinstall Windows.  A lot of work but I would feel more confident doing this.

Could you advise on how to un-corrupt the MBR of the drive without losing the data on the drive.  I think this is the only way to solve this problem.

Kind regards

Paul Clarke

[fzabkar]

AIUI, DiscWizard is Seagate's OEM version of Acronis True Image, so one would have to wonder what additional benefits, if any, are provided by the latter.

As for the damage, Windows refers to a file system as RAW when one or more of its critical structures are missing or corrupted. The volume is then treated as just a bunch of bytes.

DiscWizard installs a driver that presents the extra TB as an additional "virtual" physical disk, so it does appear that True Image 2012 may have interfered with this in some way.

That said, I'm wondering why you needed DiscWizard at all. Windows 7 is able to utilise the entire capacity if you choose GPT over MBR when initialising the drive. Is this your boot drive, and does your BIOS not have UEFI support?

Could we see a hexadecimal dump of sector 0 of your HDD?

You could use a disc editor such as DMDE.

DMDE (DM Disk Editor and Data Recovery):
http://softdm.com/download.html

[AskTheLeaf]

Paul, thank you so much for the information.

You mentioned that the drive is listed as RAW in Disk Management. We can try and see here what preparing the drive with DISKPART will do. Please follow these instructions and let me know what you find out:

Note: Please ensure all other hard drives /thumb drives/memory sticks or any other recording media have been removed from your PC. This process will delete all data on the drive, so be sure only the boot drive and the external drive are connected.

- For XP, click on "Start" > Programs > Accessories > command prompt

- For Vista/ Win 7 "Start" > Type " Command" on the Start search box

- On the results menu, Right-click on "Command Prompt" and select "Run As Administrator"

At the command prompt window type "Diskpart". There should be a entry that appears as

DISKPART>

Now type "List Disk", this will show all the disk drives that are currently detected (eg. Disk 0 , Disk 1)

Please type "Select Disk 1"

Replace (1) with the corresponding number listed on the List Disk for the hard drive that you want to erase. DISK 0 is your boot drive Please DO NOT select this disk.

Now type "Clean", press "Enter", then reboot the computer. ( This will delete all partition
and data on the drive) You should now be able to perform a long format on
the hard disk drive.

How To Format The Drive In Disk Management

To partition and format your external hard drive, follow these steps:

A. Click Start

B. Right-click "Computer" or "My Computer"

C. Select "Manage"

D. Click "Disk Management"

E. Select the XXXXXXX drive

F. Right-click the large box to the right and select "Delete Volume or Delete Partition"

G. Now right-click on the "Unallocated "area

H. Select "New Simple Volume or New Partition"

I. Agree with everything until you see this:

Default

NTFS

New Volume = ( name you want to provide for the drive )

J. Then put a check mark in the box "Perform a quick format"

K. Select Apply or Start

L. When the drive is ready for use it will say NTFS - Healthy

[dodo123]

Dear Everyone

Your keep refering to the hard drive as external.  It is a secondary internal drive - allocated by Windows with drive letter J:/.

Many thanks for your suggestions.  Just to let you know I work as a Bus Driver.  Until this weekend I am on a long 12 hour working shift.  I will have enough time to try out your ideas then.  I don't want to try to rush this issue and make a major disaster (or **bleep** up) !!  Especially by wrecking my primary internal hard drive my mistake.

Kind regards

Paul Clarke

P. S.  Must dash off for now - I have a bus to catch !!

[AskTheLeaf]

Dear Paul,

My apologies there for referring to the drive as an external.....it would seem that mainly using this info with external drives has led to an oversight on my part  

Be that as it may, once you have time to check out the information, let me know if you need further assistance with this.

Best Regards,

AskTheLeaf

[dodo123]

Dear AskTheLeaf

I have tried your idea with DISKPART via the command window.

DISKPART said it had cleaned the secondary internal hard disk.

In the Disk Management window two boxes now appear for this disk. The larger one shows 2047 GB RAW Healthy (Primary Partition).  The smaller one shows 746 GB Unallocated.

However, when I try to right click and format the larger box, the cursor turns into a small rotating blue circle for about five minutes.  Next a Microsoft blue screen appears displaying a lot of cryptic digits saying that in order to protect the computer it is being shut-down !!!

The hard disk appears to be ruined somehow and to me it looks like it happened after I installed the application of Acronis.

I am reluctant to return the hard disk to Seagate for repair as I have not been able to wipe my personal data from the disk beforehand.  I would prefer to buy a new disk.  But, under these circumstances (only having had the disk for five months) I am inclined to choose another supplier (and never use anything from Acronis again).

Please advise.

Kind regards

Paul Clarke

[dodo123]

Dear AskTheLeaf

The post by fzabkar made me think (after a night’s sleep) of uninstalling Acronis True Image Home 2012.  I decided to try this to see if it would make any difference.

After a restart I went back to Disk Management and tried formatting the large 2TB partition on the drive.

Guess what !!! This made all the difference in the world.  No Microsoft blue screen and automatic shut-down. 

Disk Management started to format the large partition 2TB partition on the 3TB internal hard drive.

I cancelled this formatting and re-installed Seagate Disc Wizard (which had been removed from the computer by Acronis True Image Home 2012).  I used the Add New Disk facility of Seagate Disc Wizard to set the disk up as a single 3TB partition. 

A quick formatting of this partition via Disk Manager worked fine.  Now I can copy by backup data from my external hard drive onto this 3TB partition with no problems.

It appears from this experience that Seagate should make it very well known to ordinary lay members of the public (like myself) NOT to use Acronis True Image Home 2012 on 3TB drives. 

Just and only use Seagate Disc Wizard.

Your info about DISKPART was very helpful and made sure I could do the above.

A combination of both yours and fzabkar’s posts - and a bit of lateral thinking - has helped solve this issue.  My faith in Seagate is fully restored.

Many thanks !!!

Kind regards.

Paul Clarke