Seagate Expansion 3.5" USB3 case - issue with NTFS/RAW format

howardb

howardb

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Hi all,

Got a really strange issue being experienced at the moment with these external Seagate USB3 cases.

I bought 4x 4tb Seagate external drives, to use the HDD's in my PC (need more storage and upgrading from 2tb to 4tb drives), i.e. remove them from the external USB3 cases and plug directly into my PC. No issues with this part, all the 4tb drives working well.

As the Seagate externals were at a really good price, I though I'd use the external USB3 cases to plug in my old 2tb drives to use as backups for certain things.
The 2tb drives are formatted as normal NTFS (non-GPT as they're under 2tb size) and all these HDD's were seen as normal within Windows 7 - all data on them was accessible and working well.

After installing the 2tb's into the Seagate external USB3 cases, 1 drive picked up fine as NTFS with all data accessible, but the other 3 drives give a message that the drive needs to be formatted - really strange. These 3 are picked up in Windows computer management but reflect a RAW partition instead of NTFS. When I re-connected each of these 3 HDD's to the PC again, they were detected immediately with the intact NTFS partition and data accessible.

Any ideas what would cause this?

As a last resort, I'm going to try and move all the data off the 3 drives over the weekend, install them into the USB3 cases again and let Windows format them whilst in the external cases, however if there is an simpler/easier fix or explanation for this it would help before trying this "last resort".

BTW, I've checked all the 2tb drives and they are perfect, no issues and no bad sectors... just strange that when plugged directly into the PC they are fine, but seemingly RAW when connected via the USB3 external cases.

Also searched a bit on Google, there are some details, but they basically involve using the "last resort" above...
 
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Very interesting. Seems to be an issue with the controller inside the external case. Have you checked if there are any firmware updates for the cases?
 
Saajid said:
Very interesting. Seems to be an issue with the controller inside the external case. Have you checked if there are any firmware updates for the cases?
Click to expand...

Thanks Saajid, no haven't checked that yet - will take a look later and update here.
I tried moving the HDD that was working in the USB3 case to the other 3 cases and got the same RAW result - conversely I tried each of the other 2tb HDD's in the USB3 case that worked, however they also produced a RAW error. I initially thought it was an HDD issue, but they are working fine when plugged directly into the PC SATA ports... really strange.

Also tried plugging each directly into the USB3 port on the mobo - no difference. My normal setup has 2x direct USB3 cables running from the mobo ports (no cable extensions used) to the USB3 cases, so I don't think it's a cable or mobo port issue.
 
howardb said:
As a last resort, I'm going to try and move all the data off the 3 drives over the weekend, install them into the USB3 cases again and let Windows format them whilst in the external cases, however if there is an simpler/easier fix or explanation for this it would help before trying this "last resort".
Click to expand...
This is correct action. Some of firmware in USB external cases reduce size of the drive reported to the system. When you format on PC you get full capacity. When you put drive to the external case, size of the drive is restricted which makes partition table invalid. You have to delete all partition, then recreate partition. It will be seen correctly both on external and SATA PC.

Alternatively to avoid moving data you can resize partition on SATA PC connection by 100MB (by try and error approach), or guided by the difference of max LBA value as seen on SATA PC and external case.
 
sajunky said:
This is correct action. Some of firmware in USB external cases reduce size of the drive reported to the system. When you format on PC you get full capacity. When you put drive to the external case, size of the drive is restricted which makes partition table invalid. You have to delete all partition, then recreate partition. It will be seen correctly both on external and SATA PC.

Alternatively to avoid moving data you can resize partition on SATA PC connection by 100MB (by try and error approach), or guided by the difference of max LBA value as seen on SATA PC and external case.
Click to expand...

Thanks sajunky. Will give that a bash as well before moving all the data and deleting/recreating the partitions ;)
 
On other thought: resize it by bigger chunk to make sure it will be recognized, then on external you can always resize it back to the full capacity.
 
Herewith an update, and I'm now even more confused....

Went the long way round and backed up all the files, then on a test 2TB HDD deleted the partition and installed it into the Seagate USB3 external case. On plugging in the USB cable and powering on, it asked to format the disk - I said "no" and was going to use Acronis Disk Director to create a partition and format as NTFS accordingly (all my HDD's are NTFS).

Now the interesting part
- Acronis picked up the now external drive, but would not give an option to format as NTFS - the only options were: Ext2, Ext3, ReiserFS, Linux Swap and None - no NTFS... now I don't know (and have never used) any of these formats; only ever used FAT, FAT32 and NTFS.

SG_Ext_Error.jpg


- So I popped the HDD back into the PC via direct SATA connection and created a single MBR primary partition formatted as NTFS. Popped the drive back into the external case and got the same "must format" error when plugging it in - I have to format the drive... WTF
- Gave up as it was getting late.
- Just had a few hours spare now and powered up the external again to see what else I can try - voila, the external that was connected, formatted as NTFS (via the PC the previous day) and is now reflecting, i.e. it did not prompt to format, however it does not show the drive name and shows the following: FS: None Partition 0x7 (NTFS, HPFS) - what format is this?

Windows Computer management however sees the drive as a normal healthy NTFS partition with the drive name and all things normal... the options for file system formatting in Win CM are NTFS and exFAT only.

Looked for a firmware update and cannot find anything for this Seagate external case or the HDD.

Now I'm a bit worried with these Seagate external cases, as they seem rather flaky and unstable - the last thing I want is to start using the drive and find it bombs out a few days/weeks later saying it needs to format again - I've written a few file to the drive now, varying from 1-2GB up to 50GB backups, and will test over the next week or two to see if it actually retains the formatting and data files.

Any other ideas?
 
Delete partition which was created when connected to SATA controller. Put it back in external, but now when Windows ask to format the disk say 'yes'.
 
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