Internal HDD (WD30EZRX) is not accessible Access denied Windows 7 Pro

Hello everybody,

I have rebuilt my computer, and when I installed my "old" HDDs on the new motherboard and CPU, the freshly installed Windows 7 Pro would not recognise one of my internal HDDs (Western Digital 3TB Green WD30EZRX). I say "old" because the HDD is less than 6 months old, and I have used it sparingly (as a library - not OS, or other work).

CPU i7-4770K
Motherboard Gigabyte GA-Z87X-UD5
problem HDD: WD30EZRX Green
working HDD: WD40EZRX Blue
working SSD: Samsung Evo 840

I reinstalled Windows, all the mobo drivers, everything works, but I cannot access this one HDD. I tried different SATA ports, I even tried installing it in another computer (also a fresh Windows 7 Pro install) and I got the same error - with this HDD only.
I SHOULD NOTE that on the old system Windows 7 Ultimate (where it was working fine), I applied a security policy on this drive to prevent certain users from writing to it, and only allow them to read the drive. HOWEVER, I applied the same policy on my other HDD (WD40EZRX) which is being recognised just fine in the new Win7 Pro install. So I'm not sure if this has anything to do with it.

Whether it's a logical or hardware problem, I don't know. This is what I noted so far:
- The error message in Windows Explorer > My computer is: "F:\ is not accessible. Access is denied."
- The HDD shows in Device Manager and Windows insists "The device is working properly"
- in Disk Manager it looks fine and healthy
- ScanDisk (Error-Checking) utility in Windows and WD Data LifeGuard reported no errors (both could run on the HDD)
- Right Click and Proporties shows the used/free space ratio
- !!! In Disk Manager, if I right click on the drive, I cannot select "Make Partition Active" and although it shows the Primary partition of the drive to be healthy, it doesn't say it is active!!!
I tried to attach a few screen shots to this post.
(Edit: Apparently the "Make Partition Active" is only for partitions with a loader for an operating system, which is not the case for my drive - so the problem may lie elsewhere.)
Partition - Mark as Active

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-gb/windows/mark-partition-active#1TC=windows-7

I'm a bit stuck, because I don't want to experiment too much with the partitions and risk messing up the MBR. And I am not sure which way to go.

I found a similar problem on the forum (albeit with some differences), and before I atempt to recover the data with Linux Puppy (as indicated in the thread below), I thought I'd ask if there is anything else I could do. Internal hard drives not accessible

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thank you very much in advance.

I have reinstalled Windows 7 Pro and all the drivers, but this time I installed it with all the HDDs connected to the computer. The first time around it was only the SSD (where I put the OS). Both WD HDDs have a MSR reserve partition (128Mb) each on them (from the previous system, thus created by Win 7 ultimate) - but this might not be relevant since one HDD (WD40EZRX) works just fine and is recognised by Windows 7 Pro, and the other (WD30EZRX) is not.

I have run MiniTool Partition Wizard 9.1 and it could see my HDD and all its contents without a problem when I right clicked on it and selected Explore.

If only Windows would as well...

Update: From Disk Management I can run ScanDisk (Error Checking - as reported before; and there are no file system errors). But from windows Explorer > My Computer, if I right click > Properties > Tools and I try to run the same operation (Error checking) I get an error message: The disk check cannot be performed because Windows can't access the disk.

Both HDDs (the one that I cannot access and the one that I can are GPT. The boot SSD is MBR of course.
I tried to convert the GPT disks to MBR, but they are over 2.0Tb and Partition Wizard Free would not allow it. I am not sure if this should make a difference, since Windows 7 is supposed to read GPT data disks (and it does so, but only one of the two HDDs)

Disk Part utility in Windows did not produce any results. I can list the disk (it's Disk 0 2794 GB). I could select and recover it successfully - but the disk is still inaccessible to Windows.

I also both a Partition Recovery Quick scan in MiniTools Partition Wizard 9.1. The operation was completed successfully, but I am still unable to access the drive in Windows.

PS: after initial problems running the Windows Update, I've managed to find and install manually the 3102810 and 3138612 updates and this solved the problem. I am now installing all the Win 7 updates. Hopefully one of them will help access the drive. I did think about this earlier, but I couldn't get around the forever hanging Windows Update problem. It's all sorted now, and the updates download is in progress.

While I was at it, I thought I'd run a Full Scan for Partition Recovery (in MiniTools Partition Wizard Free 9.1) and the following window appeared. The scan is still in progress, but in the main window, the drive (Disk 0, 2794 GB) looks fine (50% full, one partition from start to end), but in the active window (where the scanning is taking place):
- it shows as the whole disk is unallocated (bottom of screen)
- and it shows two partitions, the one starting at LBA 264192 having the status Lost/Deleted
(- and why are the two supposed partitions not contiguous - the second (lost partition) seems to be contained in the first - judging from the starting/ending LBA values)? I am a bit confused...

As of yet, no success:

- Windows 7 Pro x64 is up to date
- I have made myself the owner of the HDD (as helpfully described by whest here Hard drive permissions)

- in Windows Explorer (My Computer), I cannot access/explore the HDD (Access denied message above) and if I right click and select Properties > Tools, I cannot run any utilities on the HDD with the error above (The disk check could not be performed because Windows can't access the disk) BUUUUUT
- hard drive can be seen in Disk Management and if I right click + Properties, I can run the utilities tools on it (Error Checking, Disk Defrag, etc. (which I couldn't by going into the same menu/window from Windows Explorer) MOREOVER
- in MiniTools Partition Wizard Free 9.1, I can see the HDD, I can run any utilities I want on it (including Partition recovery - which produced nothing), AAAAAAND I can right click and explore the disk, showing my all the correct directory structure.
Unfortunately, I cannot select and copy or open any of the files (I can folders) because it's a view only window.

I have downloaded PowerDataRecovery (also a MiniTools utility) and Linux Puppy in preparation for data recovery. Unfortunately I need a larger HDD to which to recover all my data, because it's around 1.5TB, which is more than the available space I have on any HDD at the moment.

Any advice on how to access the data/ fix the HDD without doing a recovery would be most appreciated.

Thank you once again, and sorry for all the saga and print screens.

Sorted using this solution: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQ-dAqFCE7Y

Simple one in the end - even if you are the owner of the HDD, you need to make sure that Authenticated Users is given "Read Folder contents", etc. permissions. In my case Authenticated Users was not at all in the list of permissions (Even if individual users, including Administrator user) was in the list.
I can't explain it better, but it worked. I can access the HDD. :)

That is good to know.But there is something strange in the partition structure of your drive which may require correction.Can you please post a fresh screen shot of Partition Wizard showing the drive and wait for my comments after 12th June?

Of course. And thank you for your intervention, Jumanji. Since my earlier print screens I have deleted the MRS partitions (the 128Mb partition created by the old OS) and I have extended my main partition to occupy all the space on both my HDDs - the 3TB with the "Access denied" problem, and the accessible 4TB HDD. I noticed no problems after this operation, and I didn't expect any either. At the time, this hadn't solved the "Access denied" problem of the 3TB HDD. The 4TB HDD was accessible, and all the data was there. What solved the "Access denied" problem was to add the "Authenticated Users" to the permissions list and give it all the permissions.

Regarding the current partitions, I could not reproduce the earlier problem when Partition Wizard was showing two partitions, one of which was "Lost/Deleted". Even when I attempted "Partition Recovery" as in the print screen above, it only shows me a single partition from LBA 2048 until the end and it looks fine. I can only suppose that either the MRS partition or the "Authenticated Users" issue may have caused the situation in the earlier print screen - but I cannot be sure.

Although I cannot see anything suspicious, please let me know if anything looks out of place to you, or if I did not include the correct print screens.

Thank you very much once again.