W7pro64b now having issues accessing usb2/3 flash drives

[bxdobs]

Looking for suggestions on how to go about resolving a OS/Driver issue relating to USB Flash Drives

H/W W510 Lenovo laptop with:
1TB SSD
8GB Ram
2 USB2 ports
2 USB3 ports
1 SD Port
2 - 64GB flash devices plugged in to my laptop 24/7/365 used for daily backups
- one device is plugged in to right rear port (usb2)
- the other device is plugged in to the SD slot

OS: W7pro 64b all ms updates are installed

A recent backup attempt indicated that the USB2 Flash DRIVE had flipped to READ only mode ... Per Verbatim, this is a sign that the drive has had an unrecoverable internal failure ... I purchased a new drive only to find that none of my USB Ports can read this new drive ... as the SD Card still works fine, I'm leaning toward this possibly being a USB Services or OS Related issue ... this new drive works fine on other machines so was suspecting there might be a hardware failure with the Laptop ... although ... Lenovo hardware tests reveal no hardware issues

Today, I swapped the current 1TB SSD drive with a 12 month old 1TB SSD full image backup which IMHO has completely ruled out any Laptop Hardware failures as the new drive works on ALL USB ports using this old image (current drive was imaged from this old drive aprox a year ago)

So ... given not wanting to rebuild 300+G of up to a years worth of work ... and NO, WX is NOT an option here ... where would one begin to start attempting to resolve an issue like this?

Would deleting all USB devices and reinstalling them possibly help?

Deleting all USB related software? (USB Utilities etc)?

Networking has a way to rebuild stacks ... is there something similar for Disk services in NTFS or for USB Devices?

Thanks in advance.

 

[samuria]

As its a new drive did you go into disk manger create a parition format and assign a drive letter?

 

[bxdobs]

As indicated, the drive is fully functional: both in other machines (same OS) and the old image ... so ... yes, the drive is fully formatted/partitioned ... has 64Gb of available space ... and accepts files both Read and Write mode



Thanks

 

[samuria]

Quickest test is to get a free linux ldvd boot from it see if that sees it it doesnt touch you hd if it cant see it then its hardware if it does then we know its a windows error

 

[bxdobs]

Thanks again ... as stated above ... I have 2 completely operational (full) images for this LAPTOP ... they are on 2 separate 1TB SSD drives which allows me to shut down swap and restart on one or the other drive.



The 1 YEAR OLD Backup Drive (which was used as my primary drive prior to moving to the current drive) was used to create the current drive's image a year ago (so both drives are virtually the same)



I am fairly sure this Flash Drive issue is NOT related to H/W ... BECAUSE ... the new flash drive works perfectly fine on the SAME LAPTOP (Read H/W) after BOOTING from my OLD 1 YEAR OLD BACKUP SSD DRIVE


The difference between the 2 images (SSD's) involves 300+ G of installed S/W for both work and school plus MS updates that have accumulated over the past year



There was a major update with Acronis sometime this year (have had some issues with their protection S/W sometimes interfering with things) ... there have been numerous MS security Patches ... plus ... to assist my girl with her college work I have installed school Licenses for things like CAD, Embedded Compilers, etc, which can be resource intensive (while I wouldn't expect the school related S/W to be installing USB drivers, MS does have plenty of shared common class lib's/dll's that might be being used and therefore possibly affecting the FLASH DRIVE processes)



Based on my troubleshooting so far, my best guess is there is some sort of S/W issue; Device Driver, incompatible MS update, other S/W incompatibility going on ... as I rarely deal with OS stuff anymore, especially since the dawn of NTFS, I was just hoping to find some ideas on how to narrow down the field of search for this culprit.

 

[Megahertz07]

On a Win 7 Pro, GPEdit.msc or Group Policy Editor is a configuration manager for Windows which makes it easier to configure Windows settings.
I have already set a computer to not allow to access USB external disks (safety procedure)
As you have installed some school Licenses, it is possible that it has turn USB disks off.


Run GPEdit.msc and have a look at the settings (sorry can't remember where to look).


Found this:group policy - Disable USB mass storage access on client machines - Server Fault

1. Go to the client machine and
2. go to start button and type in to search box gpedit.msc
3. then your group policy window will open
4. left side of window - search Administrative Templates and double click on it
5. then click on System
6. next you will see Removable Storage Access just click on it
7. then you will see lots of group policy name
8. see the All Removable Storage Access: Deny All Access
9. double click on it and select the option Enable and click on OK button
10. you will success to block USB of client