Large external drive on USB 3.0

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Jay Freedman
Microsoft MVP
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Location: Warminster, PA

Large external drive on USB 3.0

Post by Jay Freedman »

In some ways I'm a laggard. My 6-year-old desktop has always run in Legacy (BIOS) mode because I had no reason to go to UEFI. With two 1-TB drives and a couple of smaller SSDs, it's still running well. No problems with Windows 10 v.20H2.

I've been doing weekly Macrium Reflect image backups of all four drives to an external 2-TB drive over USB 3.0, with each image running about 650 GB and keeping the previous week's image. Last week it hit the wall when there wasn't enough room to hold the two images and the temp file for the newest one. "Aha," he says, "time to move up to a 4-TB drive in the external enclosure."

When the drive arrived, I plugged it into an internal bay in the desktop, set it to GPT format with a single partition, formatted it, and copied the previous week's image file onto it -- no problem. It worked, and I was able to mount and explore the image with Reflect.

Then I put the new drive in the USB 3.0 external enclosure, plugged it in, and -- nothing. :xsad: :flee: Diskmgmt sees the assigned drive letter, says it's Removable, but says "No media" as it would for an empty CD drive.

I went into the BIOS (this is a Gigabyte GA-Z97X-UD5H motherboard) and set the "boot mode selection" option to "UEFI and Legacy", rebooted, but no change -- although I didn't expect it to help, as that affects only whether GPT format drives can be booted, not whether they can be used over USB 3.0.

Finally to my question: Is there anything I can do to make the 4-TB drive visible over USB 3.0? I'm not averse to converting all the drives to GPT and going UEFI-only if that would help, but somehow I doubt it would work.

PJ_in_FL
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Re: Large external drive on USB 3.0

Post by PJ_in_FL »

I have multiple external 4+TB drives with USB 3 interfaces. I've have plugged them into laptops and desktops running everything from Win7HP, Win8, Win8.1 and Win10 with no problems.

Have you put a 1TB drive in the enclosure to confirm the hardware is working?
PJ in (usually sunny) FL

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Jay Freedman
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Joined: 24 May 2013, 15:33
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Re: Large external drive on USB 3.0

Post by Jay Freedman »

It's the same enclosure that I just took the 2-TB drive out of, and that was working while I copied the image file from the 2-TB to the 4-TB.

What has just occurred to me is that the 4-TB drive may not be seating properly against the enclosure's connector. I'll have a look at that later.

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Jay Freedman
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Joined: 24 May 2013, 15:33
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Re: Large external drive on USB 3.0

Post by Jay Freedman »

My mistake. The enclosure that held the 2-TB drive until this morning, and in which I was trying to use the 4-TB drive tonight, is not the same one I used for copying the image this afternoon. This enclosure's circuitry is apparently FUBAR, because neither drive will work in it. Both drives do work in the other enclosure.

It's a shame, because the busted enclosure is a nice one, with a metal case and a fan, while the other one is mostly plastic and not ventilated. Oh well, time to order another one... and probably wait a week for delivery, given the season.

PJ, thanks for the suggestion. And Merry Christmas to all!

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jonwallace
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Re: Large external drive on USB 3.0

Post by jonwallace »

Jay Freedman wrote:
25 Dec 2020, 03:09
It's a shame, because the busted enclosure is a nice one, with a metal case and a fan, while the other one is mostly plastic and not ventilated. Oh well, time to order another one... and probably wait a week for delivery, given the season.
Maybe you could take the electronic gubbins out of the not-so-nice enclosure and swap it into the nice one.
John

“Always trust a microbiologist because they have the best chance of predicting when the world will end”
― Teddie O. Rahube