Ok, having a weird issue with a cli

[BlayneRTFM]

Ok, having a weird issue with a clients WD My Passport Ultra 2TB USB HDD. I'm not sure what he did with it but he apparently had a program or something format the drive when he plugged it into his system. Now the drive shows up as 1TB. I assumed there was either unallocated space or a hidden partition. However, I have tried using all Acronis tools, all WD's tools, HDD Capacity Restore which fails to start with missing driver error, HDAT2 which can't load USB drivers and thus fails to find the drive, Knoppix Live CD and various other HDD tools. None of them show unallocated space and none of them show any unknown or non-windows partitions. I've tried writing zeros to the first and last million sectors. I've tried formatting the drive using multiple partition types NTFS, exFAT, FAT32 using MBR, GPT etc. To make matters worse the drive does not have a SATA connector on it. According to teardowns I've seen of this model, the drives USB 3.0 connector is soldered straight to the HDD's PCB so, no way to connect the drive straight to SATA controller. Which is why I think a lot of the normally useful tools won't work.

I've read somewhere that sometimes the M/B BIOS will write a small hidden 7-8MB partition to the drive for shadowing the BIOS or some such thing but that some have a bug that turns 1.5TB drives into 500GB drives and 2TB drives into 1TB drives and the only way to fix it is to use a tool that will change the capacity back to stock. But again, all tools I've tried to do this require a SATA connection to work, not USB.

Not sure what else I can try? Has anyone else ran into a similar situation with these soldered USB connector drives? Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks.

 

[rclarke250]

Have you tried Gparted?

 

[BlayneRTFM]

Thanks for the reply. Yes, I've tried GParted with same results. No hidden partitions showing up. No unallocated space etc. The only thing I can think of is that some program has limited the usable size of the drive to 1TB and any program I use sees what the drive is reporting, that the drive is 1TB. I can't find any program that will allow me to show the drives full capacity that also recognizes USB drives. The few programs I know that allow you to manipulate drive capacity all require IDE or SATA connections to the drive. And this drives USB connector is built into the drive itself.

Not sure what else I can try.

 

[rclarke250]

hmmm, not sure, is there a place on the board to solder a sata connector?

 

[goombawaho]

Have you considered that it is just some type of failure of the drive electronics?
Warranty status?

"Living tomorrow is everyone's sorrow.
Modern man's daydreams have turned into nightmares.

 

[BlayneRTFM]

Thanks again for the replies. I thought about attempting to solder a SATA connector to the pcb but the design makes it next to impossible without damage and for the price of the drive, not really worth the effort. As far as it being a failure in the drives electronics, that is always possible but, I find it improbable that the drive would fail right when a program is performing some type of format operation on it and that it would fail to the point where half the drive is unusable yet no failure of any kind being picked up by S.M.A.R.T. or any other drive test I've thrown at it. Every test says the drive is 100%. Surely the drive would be able to determine the fact that half of its sectors have been rendered unusable.

 

[apstef]

What is the exact hard drive model? What does it say on the sticker?

 

[goombawaho]

All I can say when troubleshooting is: Never say it CAN'T be this or that, because it can!!!
Could it be a 1TB drive with a 2TB label???

"Living tomorrow is everyone's sorrow.
Modern man's daydreams have turned into nightmares.

 

[BlayneRTFM]

Thanks again for replying. I hear you goombawaho, I never say never. But I always go with the simplest or in this case, the cheapest solution first then work my way up. In any event, I called WD and got them to agree to RMA the drive even though it is a little out of warranty which is a rare and wonderful thing for sure. As far as it being mislabelled, all I can say is that it's labelled 2TB on the drive and the model and serial numbers match what WD Data Lifeguard is querying the model as and a quick google verifies it's a 2TB drive. It's now WD's problem anyway so, thanks for all the help and suggestions. Very much appreciated. Hopefully they will be very kind and repair or replace the drive despite it being a few weeks out of warranty.

 

[goombawaho]

So, great outcome and I guess WD thinks it's defective or they probably wouldn't have given you any kind of warranty extension. It could be a known problem inside WD and they are trying to hide it by keeping customers happy with a freebie replacement.

"Living tomorrow is everyone's sorrow.
Modern man's daydreams have turned into nightmares.

 

[BlayneRTFM]

Yes, they've probably had issues with this particular model. Seagate did the same thing with one of their Backup Plus drives. It was obviously a defective model as we had 2 of them here and quite a few clients were bringing them in. They would disconnect constantly. Seagate would just send a new bottom base which contained the USB 3.0 connector and pcb. They never asked to have the drive sent in or even the base returned. They just asked for the model number, your shipping info and sent a new one. The last one I got from them was after the drive was almost a year out of warranty. Guess they decided to just keep replacing the bases until they ran out.

 

[goombawaho]

a.k.a. silent recall

"Living tomorrow is everyone's sorrow.
Modern man's daydreams have turned into nightmares.