[Q] Reading a Hard Drive - General Questions and Answers

Figured you guys are all tech-savvy maybe you can hep me with this peculiar issue. (BTW Mods move to proper area if not correct)
My computer is an older build from late 2009 (Core i5, MSI P55-GD65 Mobo, 4GB RAM)
I just took my Hitachi Touro 3TB external enclosure apart to place the drive inside the computer (win 7 x64). When I plug it into the computer it is an "unreadable disk". When I go under administrative tools and look at the drives available on the computer the 3TB drive shows 10% of the drive's capacity as "Healthy" and in RAW format requesting I format the disk. It then shows two other partitions that are unallocated (all 3 partitions totally the 3TB). This is incorrect.
To rectify...
1.) I tried a different SATA port
2.) I updated my mobo to the newest firmware
3.) I tried a different SATA cable
Now, funny part is when I wire it back up to the external enclosure and plug it back into the computer via USB...VOILA it works.
So, my problem is getting the drive working internally what's the problem? I did this with other drives no problem but the >2TB drive now seems to be a problem. I have a 4TB Touro coming in the mail and worst case (don't want to do this) I'll just dump everything off the 3TB onto the new 4TB and then format the 3TB internally.

I might be wrong but here I think is the issue.
I once had a chance to open the outer casing of the external drive. Internally it is exactly like any other HDD u see in the market but with an additional chip that enables you a Plug n Play feature + others which windows will look for.
So when you connect it like any usual HDD, bios goes looking for certain sectors / addresses which normal HDD contains. like partition tables, MFT and all and provides details to windows till the extent it understands. So you are either going wrong at the chip or the sector stuff. Later can be resolved by re formatting.
I don't know more than this.
Sent from my HTC Desire VC using xda app-developers app

Sorta solved
Somehow when the disc was in the external enclosure it wasn't a GPT format drive because when I finally formatted the damn drive internally I couldn't make a partition larger than 2TB. Once I converted the drive to GPT I got a full 3TB readable partition.
At least it's much quicker transferring data back to it being installed internally

Related

Need some brainstorming: how to access files on a large HDD from a WM5 device?

I'm looking at integrating an HTC phone (model undecided) into my car as the MAIN entertainment center. It's a kinda "hybrid-carputer" if you like
All of the media files (mp3's, videos, etc) have to be stored on a large external hard drive.
This brings us to the question. How can I make all those files visible from the WM5's file system?
ideas so far:
External ATA drive in a Wifi "NAS-like" enclosure. So transfer between PPC and HDD is a 802.11b network... this one is easy to install but too expensive and overkill
Some kind of SDIO card with USB Host support for USB drives...couldn't find any yet
Software hack to the USB port of HTC and connect it directly to the USB drive
Please give it some thought..
ps. Regardless of the connection method, will I encounter FAT16 vs. FAT32 issues? (2 gig limits, etc.... I hope not)
thanks
Greg
Are you set on a phone? HTC makes 2 models of Advantage (WM) and the new Shift which operates as Vista and WM6. I mean, they're pricier than a phone but it would be a better option in the end if you are using it for media in your car.
The only HTC phone that has USB host is HTC Athena (Advantage, X7500).
From what I know of usb host there SHOULDN'T be any problems with size limits.
That is not true. Windows Mobile cannot handle NTFS filesystem and it is therefore limmited 32GB sized patition on any attached drive. No problem if the dive is splitted to 32GB sized partiotions, it will show up as a number of drives. This was tested on Acer n300 series.
Wexx said:
That is not true. Windows Mobile cannot handle NTFS filesystem and it is therefore limmited 32GB sized patition on any attached drive. No problem if the dive is splitted to 32GB sized partiotions, it will show up as a number of drives. This was tested on Acer n300 series.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It's not entirely right: it's only WinXP's built-in (crappy) disk manager tool that can't create FAT32 partitions bigger than 32G. Any other (decent) tool like Partition Magic can. That is, you can have FAT32 even on a 500GB HDD without the need to partition it.
(Also see my related articles, I've often tackled this problem in my USB host-related ones.)

Lost 10yrs of data on a 1.5TB HDD, please read...please help...need to recover

Hello,
I was trying to put UBCD (ultimate boot cd) on a usb stick using the supplied 'ubcd2usb' but it didn’t work, so I thought I would use the command 'ubcd2usb f: h: d -1', but nothing appeared to happen….until I restarted.
Some how it has made my 1.5TB hdd with all my stuff on from the past 10 years…not work, for lack of a better term. That command i put in wrote the ubcd to disk 1 which was the 1.5tb hdd not the usb memory stick! But it didnt write the ubcd to the disk it just made it 'unfunctional'
I also did 'ubcd2usb f: h: d -2' which made disk 2 (the 750gb hdd with windows on it) also unfunctional.
I have another 300gb disk with windows on which I didnt wipe fortunately. So When I go into computer management it says the disk is not initialised for both of the 1.5tb and .75tb disks. I know the datas all there but how do I get it back in too a readable state? I can only presume this program to get 'ultimate boot cd' has done something to teh MBR.
Any ideas would be greatly appreciated. I have not re-initialized the disk. There are 10yrs worth of photos tv music on there!
I know i could use software to recover my data.
I presume this would mean I would have to 're-initialize' the hard disk in Windows Disk Management?
I am scared that if I reinitialize it and use recovery software that all the filenames will be lost.
Is there anyway I can just write a new MBR to them?
first i would plug into a computer with a differnt os i know it sound pointless but i have had problems before and xp seems better then vista for "seeing" files.
if that is no help i would try to use a program called glary utilites it has a program to recover deleted files which. you can then to see the location of the files, deleted or not. then decide where to go from there,
hopefully someone whith more tech know how can help more.
before you do anything else you need to get some data recovery software. I use get "data back". it was totally worth the money.
vinokirk said:
Hello,
I was trying to put UBCD (ultimate boot cd) on a usb stick using the supplied 'ubcd2usb' but it didn’t work, so I thought I would use the command 'ubcd2usb f: h: d -1', but nothing appeared to happen….until I restarted.
Some how it has made my 1.5TB hdd with all my stuff on from the past 10 years…not work, for lack of a better term. That command i put in wrote the ubcd to disk 1 which was the 1.5tb hdd not the usb memory stick! But it didnt write the ubcd to the disk it just made it 'unfunctional'
I also did 'ubcd2usb f: h: d -2' which made disk 2 (the 750gb hdd with windows on it) also unfunctional.
I have another 300gb disk with windows on which I didnt wipe fortunately. So When I go into computer management it says the disk is not initialised for both of the 1.5tb and .75tb disks. I know the datas all there but how do I get it back in too a readable state? I can only presume this program to get 'ultimate boot cd' has done something to teh MBR.
Any ideas would be greatly appreciated. I have not re-initialized the disk. There are 10yrs worth of photos tv music on there!
I know i could use software to recover my data.
I presume this would mean I would have to 're-initialize' the hard disk in Windows Disk Management?
I am scared that if I reinitialize it and use recovery software that all the filenames will be lost.
Is there anyway I can just write a new MBR to them?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I faced similar sutiation 2 months back... some of my partitions dissappeared which had datya of 9 years....
I used Diskinternals and recovered all my data.. you can try 'get data back'..
PM me if ya need ne help.
And please dont use the hardisk on which u lost data. take another system, connect your data (lost) HDD and install diskinternals recovery software.. and run teh self explanatory wizard.
You can try testdisk. This tool can fix broken MBR and recover partitions.
If you are afraid to damage something, you can try company called Omnitrack. They have branches over EU
+5 on testdisk. A small free program that is a miracle. I deleted a partition at a business that I was working for and wiped all customer data. Testdisk brought the partition right back.
Key thing is to not right over the data. Its still there, just marked for deletion.

[Q] Trouble Mounting 1TB Hard Drive

I purchased the G-Tablet because I wanted a way to download photos from my camera's memory, view them, and write them to an external hard drive. The problem I've run into is that I can't get my tablet (running TnT-Lite) to recognize my 1TB Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex drive to mount. I've done a lot of searching for answers, and my first thought was that the drive wasn't receiving enough power, but I've tried it through the docking station and a powered USB hub without any luck. I also reformatted it to Fat32 just to be sure it wasn't the drive format. Sniffer never even notices it's connected.
I'm using TnT-Lite, but am perfectly willing to try other ROMs if they have better external drive support. I'm not super familiar with linux so I haven't tried seeing if I could manually mount the drive, but if someone would be interested in telling me how to see if it's recognized and manually mount it I'm all ears.
Cheers!
Gaines Kergosien
(615) 412-9739
Kind of a repost...
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=912212
Two things:
Make sure your harddrive format is supported by your kernel. Some kernels like clemsin support ntfs and other formats. I am not really sure what formats does the kernel that comes with tnt lite supports, but i recomend to check or install another kernel.
Second; make sure you connects your HDD to a power source before using it. I have not tried it myself, but i heard that the low power source of the usb port of the g tablet is not enough to supply power to the HDD.
Good luck with that, hope you find a solution to the problem.
Another thought, have you tried rebooting the tab after you've plugged the HDD in. I have a 500 gb WD elements, and if I'm having issues, usually rebooting with the drive plugged up takes care of it.
Pazzu510 said:
Kind of a repost...
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=912212
Two things:
...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes, others have posted similar issues, albeit with different drives/ROMs and little or no followup to troubleshoot the problem and no real solution.
I believe I was very specific in mentioning during the opening post that I tried using external power (via the dock and powered USB hub) and different drive formats.
lordgodgeneral said:
Another thought, have you tried rebooting the tab after you've plugged the HDD in. I have a 500 gb WD elements, and if I'm having issues, usually rebooting with the drive plugged up takes care of it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for the suggestion. I've tried having it plugged in via the dock and powered hub before boot, but still no dice.
The best case scenario for me is that someone here has the same drive, overcame this issue and is willing to share their solution. I'm hoping that I can at least find someone who knows enough about linux/ROMs to help me troubleshoot and figure out if this is a hardware, driver or software issue. Maybe the drive is being recognized but the partition isn't getting mounted for some reason? *shrug*
Try partitioning your drive to 2 500gb sections. I don't think android os recognizes 1tb drive sizes. Just a thought.
Mantara said:
Try partitioning your drive to 2 500gb sections. I don't think android os recognizes 1tb drive sizes. Just a thought.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Excellent suggestion. Just repartitioned it as (2) 465GB fat32 drives and copied over some test files, plugged the drive into the powered USB hub, plugged that into the G-tablet, booted...and at first I thought it didn't work. Then an hour later I look at my tablet and realize it's mounted! I can see the image file I was using to test it...except the image (png) doesn't open. I try moving it to the SDCard using iFileManager and it errors.
...so on the up side, the drive mounted. On the down side, there may still be some issues.
You didn't say what model drive. I got a 1TB drive to use on my Tonido plug server and server would not recognize it. apparently some of the new drives need non standard drivers. For bulk storage, the tonido works great and accessible from the web.
Rumbleweed said:
You didn't say what model drive. I got a 1TB drive to use on my Tonido plug server and server would not recognize it. apparently some of the new drives need non standard drivers. For bulk storage, the tonido works great and accessible from the web.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Is my opening post that difficult to read? Pretty sure I said it's a 1TB Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex.
not only is this not developement but snapping at the people trying to help you is just gonna not get you any help
Moved to general.
I have the exact same hard drive and the exact same problem as well. Running Cal's 1.1 with Clem's latest kernal ver. 6. No luck in seeing it.
Also, even with a thumb drive it cannot recognize it if it's formatted as NTFS. I know it's supposed to work but there must be something I'm doing wrong. Any ideas?
Thanks
thebadfrog said:
not only is this not developement but snapping at the people trying to help you is just gonna not get you any help
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It seemed to me that troubleshooting problems with ROMs not correctly mounting drives fell under development along with the ROM being used.
As for snapping at people, maybe I wasn't as appreciative of their effort as I should have been, but I felt like people were replying without even reading the opening post where I had tried hard to explain the situation in detail. It's like taking your car to a mechanic and telling him it's making a clunking sound, then receiving a call from them later saying, "Yeah, we took a look and there seems to be a clunking sound."
you try using a file explorer like root explorer?? or only sniffer?
rover442 said:
I have the exact same hard drive and the exact same problem as well. Running Cal's 1.1 with Clem's latest kernal ver. 6. No luck in seeing it.
Also, even with a thumb drive it cannot recognize it if it's formatted as NTFS. I know it's supposed to work but there must be something I'm doing wrong. Any ideas?
Thanks
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hey rover442. I'm thrilled to have gotten it to mount and, hopefully if we work together, we can figure out how to get everything working properly. To recap, here's what I did to get it to mount:
Delete the existing partition using Windows Disk Management
Create two new partitions (under 500GB)
Format those partitions using fat32format
Plug the drive into the tablet via a powered usb hub
Reboot
Wait an undefined amount of time for it to magically mount
10roller said:
you try using a file explorer like root explorer?? or only sniffer?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I've tried all of them, but when it finally mounted I noticed it in Sniffer then was able to access it using iFileManager.
Ok gaines. I'll reformat the drive and partition it and see what happens. Thanks!
Gaines, I made two partitions. I put an mp3 in each partition. Loaded it into G Tab and it sees one of the partitions and the mp3. It does not see the other partition. FTR, I am not using a powered USB, just plugging straight into the G. (formatted fat 32 on the external hard drive).
Success
Ok here's what I did to make things work in FAT 32
I downloaded a partition software called EASEUS Partition master Home. It was free. I fromatted again the whole 1TB hard drive (931GB available). here are the following tests I did:
Partition 431GB successfully seen in G Tab
Partition 531GB successfully seen in G Tab
So since I broke the 500GB threshold I tried to partition 631GB and it was good. So then I just repartitioned for the whole 931GB available and it is now being seen in Sniffer and Root Explorer. So it's fine.
However, the G Tab still cannot recognize NTFS.
You need a kernel that supports ntfs. Android does not recognise ntfs natively

[Q] XOOM and portable hard drive

Does the XOOM pair well with a portable hard drive? Im noticing I am traveling more, and need my laptop less and less in the process. The XOOM seems to take care of a majority of my needs, but I was wondering if I am able to plug in an external portable hard drive, and have the XOOM pull data, and add data to the hard drive. I'm sure I would need an app to do this (if possible) as well?
Your help is greatly appreciated
anyone know this?
If you use a USB Drive enable kernel (like Tiamet) and the drive is powered and does not contain a USB hub (like the one I tried), it might work.
I actually tried this yesterday. My XOOM is rooted and configured to use a USB Host adapter to accept USB storage. I've tested with several thumb drives, all seem to work. Yesterday I hooked up a 320GB self powered USB HDD and unfortunately it did not work. It could be just this drive, so only way to find out is test with others =)
StirCwazy said:
I actually tried this yesterday. My XOOM is rooted and configured to use a USB Host adapter to accept USB storage. I've tested with several thumb drives, all seem to work. Yesterday I hooked up a 320GB self powered USB HDD and unfortunately it did not work. It could be just this drive, so only way to find out is test with others =)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Your problem is most likely that you don't have the drive formatted as FAT32. I tried a 250GB drive and it worked nicely. In this thread I have a link to a site that offers you a free simple solution (Windows itself does not allow formatting of such large drives with FAT32).
funnycreature said:
Your problem is most likely that you don't have the drive formatted as FAT32. I tried a 250GB drive and it worked nicely. In this thread I have a link to a site that offers you a free simple solution (Windows itself does not allow formatting of such large drives with FAT32).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You know what, you are 100% correct. I forgot I had this drive formatted at NTFS for something else I was toying with. I just tried a FAT32 self powered USB drive (120GB) and it worked just fine.
StirCwazy said:
You know what, you are 100% correct. I forgot I had this drive formatted at NTFS for something else I was toying with. I just tried a FAT32 self powered USB drive (120GB) and it worked just fine.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I LOVE easy solutions! Enjoy your HDD and don't forget to thank the guys that enabled the USB hosting!!!
so I should pick up a hard drive (portable), and then format it to fat32? Ill use the link from your post and I'm good?
kasrhp said:
so I should pick up a hard drive (portable), and then format it to fat32? Ill use the link from your post and I'm good?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If you read the thread carefully people mention issues with certain thumb drives that have indicator lights because they might require too much power. However, when I connect my iPhone all it does is charge So my interpretation is that the HDD needs to have its own power source
Sadly the problem with fat32 and Android in general at the moment is that you can't use files >2 gigs. You could on Androids internal storage which is usually a file system that supports large files(RFS,EXT3/4...) if your device has that much internal storage available.
Does anyone know what our internal file system is? I haven't messed with it enough to know yet - but assuming because the thing mounts in Windows. - its FAT(at least the part we can mount and write to from windows).
And all of this boils down to Windows and their lack of reality in that we don't all run NTFS, and that maybe, possibly, someone MIGHT WANT TO HOOK UP A GOD BLESSED EXT DRIVE!
But i guess I could just format all of my stuff as NTFS, because the open source community is actually smart and Linux can read it. But then again maybe I would need to work on someones stupid ass Mac and need to write a file to said NTFS drive - OH WAIT CAN'T EF'IN DO THAT!
/rant
You could probably use ext2 on the hard drive - it can be configured to be readable and writable in Windows. It's similar to FAT32 but doesn't have the limit on file size.

[Q] Mount Xoom as USB Storage

I just swapped my Samsung Galaxy Tab with a Xoom and I'm a bit miffed. I understand that the Xoom has 32GB of internal storage and does not come with an external SD card (or at least the person I bought it from kept the card).
With my SGT, when I plugged it into my Win7 64bit PC, the SD card would come up as a USB mass storage device.
Is there any way to do this with the internal storage of the Xoom? It's aggravatingly SLOW transferring files through the Personal Music Player icon that Win7 tosses in My Computer. I (as well as several other apps I use) would rather have a physical drive letter to copy to and from.
Not afraid to use a custom ROM or a modded apk or other system file. Yes, I did search and I also read the suggested topics that came up on the posting page, nothing was specifically related to the Xoom.
Yes. The Tiamat Rom, as well as the official 3.2 update activated the SD card slot in the xoom. No, the Xoom didnt ever come with a sdcard already in the slot like phones do, so you didnt get ripped off. the xoom file system is a little funny, "SDcard" is a seperate partition in the internal memory. If using Tiamat, and you have a sdcard in the sdcard slot, its labeled "external1" in the /mtn partition. When first placing an sd card in the slot, the system does take f o r e v e r, to recognize it (make sure you are also pushing the "mount sdcard" button in the storage settings menu). I generally just reboot the xoom after mounting a new card, that usually speeds up the process. When its all said and done when you plug the xoom into your pc you will get two hard drives that pop up, internal and sdcard. And heads up, you still cant put apps2sd like phones can, and you have to use root manager to move files from internal sdcard to external.
Yeah, that's the problem. At the moment, I don't have an SD card to put in it, but I was still expecting the internal storage to be mapped to a hard drive. I don't mind the Xoom showing up as a PMP but a lot of the apps I use as a developer (and some I use recreationally) need an actual drive letter I was hoping that even without an SD card mounted, that the internal storage would show up as a local disk. I've got 3.2.2 if that helps any.
Bought several SD cards, seems one of the contacts on the inside is dead, so I'm out as far as SD cards are concerned
LycaonX said:
Bought several SD cards, seems one of the contacts on the inside is dead, so I'm out as far as SD cards are concerned
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If that's the case, you got a bad deal. Generally, the Xoom is excellent and though you can work around it, having the sdcard feels pretty essential to me. Hopefully you can get it fixed or get your other tab back.
The contact wasn't dead, it had a piece of clear plastic tape over it (not intentionally, it was a corner of what looks like shipping or packing tape). Got a whopping 4GB SD card plugged in, shows up fine under /mnt/external1 but neither of them are showing up as drives in Explorer
I've got 3.2.2, 4G build (HLK75D), tried this with and without root, no luck with any config.
Edit: Okay, lots of searching later, and it seems Google thought it was a wonderful idea to not include such functionality with Honeycomb. I am extremely well versed in c++ but I have never written a driver before, but I will be downloading and studying the Windows Driver Development Kit and seeing if I can write a replacement driver specifically for the Xoom to create an MTP to Logical Disk bridge driver.
In effect, you'll replace the standard Windows MTP Driver for the Xoom with this custom driver, which will bridge MTP to a lettered drive in Windows Explorer. Yeah, I know it's a complicated step but I want my damn Xoom to have drive letters in Explorer and as a programmer, I usually end up solving my own problems when the software giants pull retarded stuff like this.
LycaonX said:
The contact wasn't dead, it had a piece of clear plastic tape over it (not intentionally, it was a corner of what looks like shipping or packing tape). Got a whopping 4GB SD card plugged in, shows up fine under /mnt/external1 but neither of them are showing up as drives in Explorer
I've got 3.2.2, 4G build (HLK75D), tried this with and without root, no luck with any config.
Edit: Okay, lots of searching later, and it seems Google thought it was a wonderful idea to not include such functionality with Honeycomb. I am extremely well versed in c++ but I have never written a driver before, but I will be downloading and studying the Windows Driver Development Kit and seeing if I can write a replacement driver specifically for the Xoom to create an MTP to Logical Disk bridge driver.
In effect, you'll replace the standard Windows MTP Driver for the Xoom with this custom driver, which will bridge MTP to a lettered drive in Windows Explorer. Yeah, I know it's a complicated step but I want my damn Xoom to have drive letters in Explorer and as a programmer, I usually end up solving my own problems when the software giants pull retarded stuff like this.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Cool. Let us know when you've got it. I'm sure there will be interest for such a driver.
Just an update, the MTP side of the bridge appears rather simple to do. I may see why Google decided on MTP instead of the old unmount/mount dance. MTP allows the device to basically 'share' the storage without isolating it to a single device. Although if a hobbyist programmer like me can feasibly believe that they can program an MTP bridge, I don't see why the college educated, career programmers at Google couldn't do the same.
Basically what I am looking at is a driver that will bridge the MTP side of the Xoom over to a virtual hard disk device in Windows. It looks like I'll need to implement a way to present the virtual drive as a FAT32 (or maybe NTFS) formatted device, since software-wise all a virtual disk handles are pointers to what amounts to the 'raw' areas of a disk. Still working on it, as mentioned before I'm a hobbyist and have never dug into driver development.
LycaonX said:
Just an update, the MTP side of the bridge appears rather simple to do. I may see why Google decided on MTP instead of the old unmount/mount dance. MTP allows the device to basically 'share' the storage without isolating it to a single device. Although if a hobbyist programmer like me can feasibly believe that they can program an MTP bridge, I don't see why the college educated, career programmers at Google couldn't do the same.
Basically what I am looking at is a driver that will bridge the MTP side of the Xoom over to a virtual hard disk device in Windows. It looks like I'll need to implement a way to present the virtual drive as a FAT32 (or maybe NTFS) formatted device, since software-wise all a virtual disk handles are pointers to what amounts to the 'raw' areas of a disk. Still working on it, as mentioned before I'm a hobbyist and have never dug into driver development.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I forgot that Team Tiamat had implemented usb mass storage in an earlier verion of their Xoom kernel, but decided to remove it as it caused many complications. Look in the back pages of the Development section, for tiamat kernels and also dinomite's mass storage watcher thread. You may be able to find something you can use.

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