W8 can see but not access 2TB second hard drives.

silverexpress

New Member
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3
Hello,

First post here. Was a gamer for years but no time for it or the video editing I once did anymore so I traded my 2011 2k custom desktop rig for a laptop.
Have a Toshiba Satellite L955-S5330 running Windows 8.

I took my Seagate 2TB, and two WD 1 TB hard drives out of my pc before trade, they worked fine in the desktop rig running windows 7. I bought a Vantec sata to usb adapter so I could connect my drives with all of my personal files I've obtained and saved over the years to transfer all of it to a few external drives and then I plan on selling internal drives once done. They power up great, windows recognizes them and give each a letter F drive, but I cannot access any of them. When I attempt to open it windows tells me I need to format it, when I click no it says "file system not recognized". I connected two of the three to another desktop running windows 7 and it works fine, try again on my laptop through usb and same thing, can see it but can't open it.
I tried Stellar Phoenix recovery software and it took forever to amass the files in two of the drives but in the very end on both drives it errored out saying drive cannot be recovered. I again connected both to yet another pc this one again on windows 7 and drives showed up and was accessible. WTH?
Drivers are up to date, I have uninstalled them and with reboot w8 reinstalled them, no fix there. I read somewhere it could be a security issue preventing w8 from accessing the drives but I cannot find any security tab in the drive properties in device manager.
The drives are obviously not corrupted even though Steller pretty much told me they were being it is top notch recovery software and it can neither access my data in quick, advanced or raw mode.
I must also note in disk management drives are labeled as RAW.

Out of ideas here, any help appreciated.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8
Maybe your Vantec Sata USB adapter driver is not compatible with Windows 8. You can open the Device Manager and check if there is a yellow exclamation mark in front of the USB port.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    8.1x64PWMC Ubuntu14.04x64 MintMate17x64
    Computer type
    PC/Desktop
    System Manufacturer/Model
    Home Brewed
    CPU
    I7 4970K OC'ed @4.7 GHz
    Motherboard
    MSI-Z97
    Memory
    16 GB G-Skill Trident X @2400MHZ
    Graphics Card(s)
    NVIDIA GeForce GTS 450
    Sound Card
    X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Professional Series
    Monitor(s) Displays
    Dual HP-W2408
    Screen Resolution
    1920X1200
    Hard Drives
    256 GB M2 sm951, (2) 500GB 850EVO, 5TB, 2 TB Seagate
    PSU
    Antec 850W
    Case
    Antec 1200
    Cooling
    Danger Den H20
    Keyboard
    Logitech
    Mouse
    Logitech Performance Mouse MX
    Internet Speed
    35/12mbps
    Browser
    Firefox
Maybe your Vantec Sata USB adapter driver is not compatible with Windows 8. You can open the Device Manager and check if there is a yellow exclamation mark in front of the USB port.

Just checked no yellow !'s anywhere in the usb devices. While the manual for the adapter does not state it's compatible with windows 8 they state "all" windows systems and there is a few reviews on amazon that state they currently use this device on w8 systems. I will check the Vantec site again to see if they have an actual forum or problem solver link. But being it's recognized in w8 I see the issue being with w8 and not the device. It will allow me to format drives for use but I cannot access them even though they were formatted long ago and as stated work on other non-w8 systems.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8
Just called Vantec, great quick customer support. I confirmed the device is compatible with w8 as they said they have tested it extensively on w8. They have no clue being their device works with my drives on another w7 system, being it's all basic usb drivers they are the same on w7 and w8. They suggested I try to get to a w7 system again and then do the proper disk checks there. Problem is I won't have access to a w7 system I can use for a good period of time for a good while. So I have definitely ruled out the device and drives themselves as being the issue.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8
I have had the same type of problem with basic flash drives. It seems to me it is related to using the drive on another system. The flash did eventually become recognized..I suppose Windows needed to do something to make it compatible, but I have no idea what. I have also had external hard drives I use for image backups no longer work for the backups, even though there is still plenty of space on them...it is a mystery.

About all you can do it try changing the port it is plugged into and see if it improves. But plug it in a few times over a period and see if it will eventually come around.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8.1 x64
    Computer type
    PC/Desktop
    System Manufacturer/Model
    Home Grown
    CPU
    i7 3770K
    Motherboard
    ASUS P8Z77 -v Pro, Z87-Expert
    Memory
    16 G
    Graphics Card(s)
    EVGA GTX 680 Classified (2)
    Hard Drives
    Kingston SSD 240 GB
What about compatibility with USB interface and HDD ? Had a problem like that with large HDD and USB adapter a while ago and solved it only by changing that adapter, Tried plugging it in another computer ?
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows 8.1 Pro
    Computer type
    PC/Desktop
    System Manufacturer/Model
    Home made
    CPU
    AMD Ryzen7 2700x
    Motherboard
    Asus Prime x470 Pro
    Memory
    16GB Kingston 3600
    Graphics Card(s)
    Asus strix 570 OC 4gb
    Hard Drives
    Samsung 960 evo 250GB
    Silicon Power V70 240GB SSD
    WD 1 TB Blue
    WD 2 TB Blue
    Bunch of backup HDDs.
    PSU
    Sharkoon, Silent Storm 660W
    Case
    Raidmax
    Cooling
    CCM Nepton 140xl
    Internet Speed
    40/2 Mbps
    Browser
    Firefox
    Antivirus
    WD
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