Drive not recognized

I have an external drive that was working fine until I left it overnight having files being copied to it. Today it stopped copying and gave me the 0x800701B1 error code. When I checked the disk it said it can't check raw disks. So some kind of corruption obviously happened.

Now it doesn't show up in File Explorer yet it does show in Disk Manager and there it says NTFS and says drive is Healthy and online. Yet even from that window Properties>check disk won't run. It doesn't even try to run it just ignores clicking on it. Is there any hope for this drive or should I just try to reformat it from Disk Manager? I think the cables must be OK or Disk Manager wouldn't recognize it either. I've rebooted with no change. It's a 7 TB WD easystore.

larrydonline said:

I have an external drive that was working fine until I left it overnight having files being copied to it. Today it stopped copying and gave me the 0x800701B1 error code. When I checked the disk it said it can't check raw disks. So some kind of corruption obviously happened.

Now it doesn't show up in File Explorer yet it does show in Disk Manager and there it says NTFS and says drive is Healthy and online. Yet even from that window Properties>check disk won't run. It doesn't even try to run it just ignores clicking on it. Is there any hope for this drive or should I just try to reformat it from Disk Manager? I think the cables must be OK or Disk Manager wouldn't recognize it either. I've rebooted with no change. It's a 7 TB WD easystore.

Click to expand...

Sounds like warranty time if WD honors it and that is a big if these days

Depending on exactly what error is occurring it could be a bad drive(or going bad) or it could be the drive interface electronics within the enclosure causing the issue with the drive actually being okay. You can try a few utilities to troubleshoot/repair but if unsuccessful you could go the RMA route or simply pull the drive from the enclosure to check it out.

If possible, test the drive on another Windows computer and run Sea Tools Long Generic test overnight while sleeping.

I installed the Sea Tools app but once installed it would not run on my WIndows 11 home computer.

Sea Tools has several software:

Windows
Legacy
Bootable

Try each > post images or share links displaying error messages or codes or results.




Also try:

larrydonline said:

I have an external drive that was working fine until I left it overnight having files being copied to it. Today it stopped copying and gave me the 0x800701B1 error code. When I checked the disk it said it can't check raw disks. So some kind of corruption obviously happened.

Now it doesn't show up in File Explorer yet it does show in Disk Manager and there it says NTFS and says drive is Healthy and online. Yet even from that window Properties>check disk won't run. It doesn't even try to run it just ignores clicking on it. Is there any hope for this drive or should I just try to reformat it from Disk Manager? I think the cables must be OK or Disk Manager wouldn't recognize it either. I've rebooted with no change. It's a 7 TB WD easystore.

Click to expand...

Please post a screenshot of Windows Disk Management with only your faulty external disk plugged in. Drive showing RAW means the filesystem is corrupted. We can try and repair it with TestDisk.

Two such RAW drives successfully repaired and made accessible here.



As zbook suggested download and install the trial version of Hard Disk Sentinel and check the health of your external drive. Post a screenshot.


Sample screenshot:

larrydonline said:

When I checked the disk it said it can't check raw disks. So some kind of corruption obviously happened.

Now it doesn't show up in File Explorer yet it does show in Disk Manager and there it says NTFS and says drive is Healthy and online. Yet even from that window Properties>check disk won't run. It doesn't even try to run it just ignores clicking on it.

Click to expand...

I suspect a drive controller board fault. When that occurs, it's likely that scanners checking for sectors, will find nothing wrong.
I dealt with a Western Digital WD5000AAJS 500 GB SATA HDD from 2007 with a fault like that, and MHDD (DOS-based, sorry) finds nothing wrong when scanning!

RJARRRPCGP said:

I suspect a drive controller board fault. When that occurs, it's likely that scanners checking for sectors, will find nothing wrong.
I dealt with a Western Digital WD5000AAJS 500 GB SATA HDD from 2007 with a fault like that, and MHDD (DOS-based, sorry) finds nothing wrong when scanning!

Click to expand...

Your suspicion, I would think, is unwarranted and misleading.

The OP's disk will more or less look like Disk 2 in the following screen shot where Drive I: is RAW . Its properties still shows it as NTFS. Check disk will not run on a RAW drive as shown in the next screenshot. That's all what the OP has reported.




This problem that has arisen due to file system corruption is amenable for correction and we can restore the file system to NTFS in most cases.

That is what I had successfully done in the two cases I had referenced in my previous post. Please do read those.

The problem you had faced years ago might have been quite different and its causative factor does not apply here.. Sorry to negate your thoughts on this.

Nothing I tried would cause the file system to recognize the drive so I eventually reformatted it. It still won't see it when connected to the USB.

So since this was to be, and had been, a backup drive only I plugged another drive, a 9 TB WD Elements into the same USB connection and while coping a 2.5 TB file onto it it stopped with the same error, which means basically that the file can't be found, after only coping about 85.6 GB. I tried to run scan disk and I got the same message as with the first drive. It sees it as RAW format. However this time File Explorer still sees it, as well as Device/Computer Manager, as NTFS. So I just continued to copy more files which went well. I did use a smaller batch, about 100 MGs.

So there seem to be several probabilities. Something about copying a huge 2+ TB file is too much for the system to handle flawlessly. Another possibility is that there could be something wrong with the USB connector since both drives were plugged in at the same hub. Yeah, I don't know if using a hub made a difference but it never has before. I was getting 150 Megs per second before it stopped working. What's even more intriguing to me is how Computer Manager sees the drive as NTFS while scan disk, whether accessed from DOS or from properties sees it as RAW. In the case of the first drive that failed Computer Manager saw it as NTFS while both File Explorer and Scan Disk saw it as RAW.

I ran that DISM utility from DOS and it says the drive is healthy. The Hard Disk Sentinel also says it's healthy. That's a great utility. It says the drive should last 1,000 days. It's been in use for 363 days.

I suppose I could have the one bad USB connector on my hub which has eight slots. Just theorizing I wonder if I use a different USB port if that could make scan disk to see it as NTFS or if once it thinks it's RAW it won't change its mind?

I thought about buying a new drive to replace the one the system won't see and spent hours reading Amazon reviews. It sure seems like a crap shoot. Every drive by every maker has people with bad experiences who say they'll never buy another and people who are happy as a lark with their experience with the drive. Well I'm currently running 3 WD Elements, 1 Hitachi, 4 Seagate Expansion Drives, and 2 Touros. I don't think 3 TB Hitachis or TOUROs are still being made. SS Drives cost too much.

If the Elements keeps letting me load it up I'll keep using it until it's nearly full then store it in my safe. I hope when I dig it out in two years that it will still be recognized by File Explorer.

For all test / steps make sure that images or share links are posted into this thread.

Ha........ hub with eight slots. You never mentioned it before (Hmmm.... I should hereafter ask how the external drive is connected. Directly to the USB port/ through a hub/through a dock. My bad ).

It is quite obvious now that your hub is responsible for corrupting the large capacity drives. The ports are unable supply the required power for the large capacity HDDs. Once it corrupts the filesystem and makes it RAW it won't reverse automatically unless you repair the file system corruption.. You must use a powered hub if you want to stay clear of this problem and do not keep any number of HDDs plugged into the hub.

I use a QZ Active Powered USB hub 4 port USB hub with 12V 2A 24W Power Adapter USB 3.1 Gen 1. If I would be using more number of ports I will choose a hub with a higher powered adapter.




Once writing is interrupted due to lack of sufficient power, your HDD will get corrupted.

The hub does have its own power supply. I'm using most of the HDDs regularly and it's plugged into one of the best USB ports on the computer. However I don't do mass copying often so I suppose I should just be sure and have the two drives that are being coped from and to plugged directly into the computer. Lesson learned. Thanks.

jumanji said:

Your suspicion, I would think, is unwarranted and misleading.

Click to expand...

In my case with the mentioned faulty HDD, Chkdsk spits out a false insufficient-space error. It seems to fail before it even scans sectors, in my case. It also happens randomly, making me think the HDD I was checking, had a bad connection on the PCB.

Interestingly, I don't recall it saying "RAW", like the output that was shown, it went right to a false insufficient-space error on the HDD I almost kept. Perhaps because of Chkdsk being an earlier version, compared to what 10/11 has. That was back in no later than 2009.