lost access to drive

tgfyhre · 11 Oct 2016

I asked this over on tenforums since I'm running Windows 10 but I've gotten no response So I was hoping someone here could help.

I'm having a serious issue here with my external USB 3.0 HDD enclosures. They used to work fine with Windows 7. Now with Windows 10 I fought all last week trying to get Windows 10 to see the enclosures. I have no idea what happened but suddenly Window 10 was able to see the drives so I thought everything was okay. This morning I'm trying to copy some files over to one of the drives on the enclosure using Teracopy and it just freezes mid-copy. suddenly the green bar at the top of the window starts moving left to right as if the drives are being "found" again. This takes over a minute. At some point Teracopy tries to resume and then hangs again while the same thing happens over and over. All the lights on the enclosure blink on and off as this happens, like they're being found again. Same thing happens when copying using Windows Explorer. I end up having to cancel the copy process and it takes a good minute before it cancels. It won't let me to a dskchk because Windows can't access the drive.

Now 1 of the drives is inaccessible. I have no idea what happened but I'm freaking out because I"m afraid to do anything that might jeopardize losing the drive. It shows the drive letter but n bar indicating space available and if I click ont he drive I get:

I:\ is not available.
Access is Denied.

I've tried rebooting the PC, and connecting the enclosure via esata but nothing is getting the drive back. The other drives show up fine but I can't copy to them without the issue described above. Also, I was using the enclosure just an hour ago to zip some files up from the enclosure to an internal drive, and it worked perfectly. So I have no idea what's going on here. Can anybody help?

Searching this error suggests I should take ownership of the drive which I've never done before. I'm afraid to do anything that might risk losing or corrupting my data. Under properties>security tab for that drive, it lists 2 entries : SYSTEM and Administrators. Both entries have all the checkmarks under allow except "special permissions".

Can anybody please help me get this drive back up and running without losing my data?

Megahertz07 · 11 Oct 2016

I'll say that you have a HDD issue.
Give us all information of your enclosure and disk.
Open Disk Manager (right click on computer - Manage - Disk Manager), expand all columns so we can read and take a snap shot.
Post here as an attachment.

Eric3742 · 11 Oct 2016

Hi

Have you check that this Teracopy compatible with Windows 10.

There are just 2 websites i went to.
It stated is up to Windows 8 64 bit.
There is no statement about using on Windows 10.

Teracopy (free) - Download Teracopy's latest version in english on CCM

TeraCopy for Microsoft Windows - Code Sector

It is better to confirm if it is compatible to Windows 10.

jumanji · 12 Oct 2016

Please check whether this helps.

SOLVED: Location is not available (Access is denied) - Appuals.com

tgfyhre · 13 Oct 2016

I've been through a nightmare these last few days with my corruption. 2 of my 4 drives were locked out and corrupted. Somehow I managed to change the permissions and get back into the drives to run chkdisk, which found tons of corrupted files and other issues. Basically all 4 drives in the Icy Dock enclosure I was copying to got corrupted. 2 drives weren't affected too badly but two drives were really messed up. I lost over a TB of data on 1 of the drives. All 4 are now repaired and test fine with chkdsk but the damage is done. I'm posting this over on tenforums too but I'll post here because I'm really stumped and any help would be appreciated to hunt down the issue. I originally thought it was the Icy Dock enclosure at fault, but I now think it may be related to an error message I've been getting in the event viewer:

"Disk X has the same disk identifiers as one or more disks connected to the system. Go to Microsoft's support website (http://support.microsoft.com) and search for KB2983588 to resolve the issue."

Looking back in my event viewer I now see I was getting these errors for a while now but it's only since I tried copying data to the Icy Dock enclosure the other day that the drives got corrupted. I may have also been getting this error with another enclosure by a different manufacturer - this one connected via esata. So...is my esata card at the root of this corruption/error message? It used to work great in my Windows 7 PC. Or is it something else causing this error? I don't remember now if the actual corruption during copying happened via USB 3 or esata since I was going back and forth with the connections trying to get the drives to get recognized. I tend to use the Icy Docks via USB 3 since that's why I bought them. I do know these error messages were being logged in event viewer long before I ran into this corruption, and the Icy Dock drives were not connected to both USB 3 and esata ll that time. So I highly doubt the issue was due to both connections being plugged in simultaneously as I don't think that was the case.

My event viewer is full of those exact same messages day after day, each time I turned on an enclosure, until the corruption finally hit when I started copying files to the Icy Dock. That's when I realized I had a serious problem.

I was making a full disc backup to a different enclosure (not Icy Dock) the night before my 4 drives got corrupted in the Icy Dock, and the backup software (Acronis) kept locking up at the start of the backup, taking several minutes to continue. Once it unfroze it continued the backup and the verification completely successfully so I didn't worry too much about it. I think during that time in the event viewer I was getting those "same disk identifiers as one or more disks connected to the system" errors for that enclosure.

Icy Dock specifically mentions not connecting esata and USB to the same enclosure at the same time. I'm absolutely certain I didn't do this with the other brand's enclosure I was doing the backup with, because it only supports esata. Yet it looks like that one also may have thrown up these errors. I can't tell for sure since event viewer is so cryptic.

How do I go about troubleshooting this error message and it's cause? Is USB 3 on my motherboard (Gigabyte Z170x gaming 7) not playing nice with my enclosures the issue? But as I said some of my enclosures are esata only. Is it my esata card? Is having the esata card installed in the system enough to screw up all my enclosures? I think this message may be at the heart of my problem but I don't know what to look at as a culprit. I'm not convinced at this point that it is the Icy Dock at fault. I know this is a very technical and detailed issue I'm posting about. I just think the more info I post the better to help figure this out. I'm really stuck here and I have a pile of healthy drives now that I'm not comfortable plugging in again until I have a good idea what happened.

- I had fast startup enabled by default until I just discovered it was causing shutdown errors in event viewer so I've disabled it now. Is it possible fast startup was somehow causing a malfunction with my esata card being recognized and that caused havoc with my enclosures? I used to get a non-RAID boot screen for my RocketRAID 622 esata card at each startup on Windows 7 but I don't get that on Windows 10. Just a stab in the dark but I'm really stuck here.

- Could it be the intellipark issue with the WD green drive that was in the Icy Dock? But I don't have a green drive in every enclosure. There was one in the Icy Dock and that's one of the drives that was corrupted. I have WD blue and black drives too and rumor has it some of those drives have intellipark also. I have no idea if that's playing a part. Icy Dock warns about this. They highly recommend disabling intellipark. many forums highly recommend against it as disabling it causes issues. All I know is I never had issues with enclosures until Windows 10.

- Could it be the intellipark issue with the WD green drive that was in the Icy Dock? But I don't have a green drive in every enclosure. There was one in the Icy Dock and that's one of the drives that was corrupted. I have WD blue and black drives too and rumor has it some of those drives have intellipark also. I have no idea if that's playing a part. Icy Dock warns about this. They highly recommend disabling intellipark. many forums highly recommend against it as disabling it causes issues. All I know is I never had issues with enclosures until Windows 10.

- I've used teracopy all during my setup of Windows 10 and all my software using the internal drive and USB thumb drive and never had any issue. So I doubt teracopy is to blame. The Icy Dock also froze and corrupted when using Windows copy.

Note: this is what Microsoft says about KB2983588:

This problem may be caused by any one of several different situations. The two most common situations are the following:

If multiple paths to the same physical disk device are available, but Microsoft Multipath I/O (MPIO) is not enabled, the device is exposed to the system by all paths that are available. This causes the same device ID data (such as Device Serial Number, Vendor ID, Product ID, and so on) to be exposed multiple times.

tgfyhre · 13 Oct 2016

I just talked to Icy Dock tech support over the phone. He has never heard of this situation before. He will look into it on his end with other tech support members but he suggested I try to rule things out on my end by using other enclosures, try esata and USB 3, try removing my esata card to rule that out, etc., but I don't have any spare test drives to risk losing at this point and I'm sure not going to start testing with any of my important drives with data on it. He said there's a lot of possible things at play here and it's going to be tough to narrow it down. I don't even know where to start.

Megahertz07 · 13 Oct 2016

Do you do Hot swap on the Icy Doc (Remove it with the computer on)? Does your BIOS have a Hot Swap option for each disk?
Where did the disk came from? Did you erased all partitions and then format the disk when you put it into the doc?

Have a look at this link https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/2983588

tgfyhre · 13 Oct 2016

I never hot swap. I disconnect/eject the drives with the remove hardware icon in the tray and then turn the enclosure power off with the power switch on the front/back of the units.

These are all existing hard drives with files and data on them. The same hard drives and enclosures that I have been using for years on my old Windows 7 system.

The link you posted I already quoted in the previous post I made. I believe that error is key to figuring out what is going on but I can find almost nothing about this error or why it happens. I never had any issues with these enclosures on Windows 7.

Windows 10 didn't even want to detect my Icy Dock enclosure/drives over USB 3 when I first fired them up. After some switching back and forth between USB 3 and my esata card a few times, they were suddenly getting detected over USB 3. After attempting to copy files over, that is when I got the corruption.