[OT] New motherboard not seeing large hard drive correctly

[hugh....@hotmail.com]

My ASUS M3A motherboard got replaced by an ASRock N68C-GS FX yesterday. The ASUS board was toast as a result of a stupid mistake I made which I described in another thread on this newsgroup. Upon getting it home from the shop, I find that I have a major issue and the tech is not back until Monday so I thought I'd ask here to see if I can get myself out of trouble.

The problem is that one of my hard drives is not being recognized properly. I have two 750 GB drives, C and D, that are showing up just fine but the big 3TB drive, which was split into three drives, E, F, and G, is showing up as a single drive, E. When I click on it, it tells me that it hasn't been formatted and offers to format it for me. This is very distressing since I have over 2 TB of data on that drive that I do NOT want to lose.

I'm running Windows XP (SP3) 32-bit. All of the drives are SATA, including the 3TB one. I installed the 3 TB myself about a year and a half ago and remember that I had to do some extra setup steps to get the full 3 TB recognized in XP. There was a special step or two; I still see Seagate Disk Wizard on my desktop and some Acronis entries in Device Manager from that effort.

I'm trying to figure out how to make my data visible again. Frankly, I'm not sure why changing the motherboard should have caused the drive to not be correctly recognized any more. I'm afraid to do anything, even launch Disk Wizard, for fear that the software will start formatting the drive and costing me all the data which took a lot of effort to accumulate. (And no, it isn't my porn stash ;-)

Does anyone know how I can get the drive to be recognized correctly? Is there possibly a setting that has to change in the BIOS to enable the board to see the big drive as it really is?

I realize that this isn't a question that really belongs on this newsgroup since I no longer have an ASUS mobo in that computer. I've posted the question at tomshardware.com but haven't received an answer yet so I'm going to try a few more places to see if I can get any useful information.

--

I've noticed one other issue with the new ASRock mobo: no audio. I plugged in my speakers which worked perfectly fine with the old mobo but got no audio. When I checked in Control Panel/Sounds and Audio Devices (I'm running 32-bit Windows XP SP3), it says there's no audio device. Device Manager has the VIA HD Audio flagged with a yellow warning triangle. I tracked down the drivers but they won't install.

I'm wondering if the tech who installed the board forgot to connect a wire or something. I'm hoping it's not a defective motherboard.

Can anyone suggest steps I can take to get this back online?

[Paul]

hugh....@hotmail.com wrote:
> My ASUS M3A motherboard got replaced by an ASRock N68C-GS FX yesterday. The ASUS board was toast as a result of a stupid mistake I made which I described in another thread on this newsgroup. Upon getting it home from the shop, I find that I have a major issue and the tech is not back until Monday so I thought I'd ask here to see if I can get myself out of trouble.
>
> The problem is that one of my hard drives is not being recognized properly. I have two 750 GB drives, C and D, that are showing up just fine but the big 3TB drive, which was split into three drives, E, F, and G, is showing up as a single drive, E. When I click on it, it tells me that it hasn't been formatted and offers to format it for me. This is very distressing since I have over 2 TB of data on that drive that I do NOT want to lose.
>
> I'm running Windows XP (SP3) 32-bit. All of the drives are SATA, including the 3TB one. I installed the 3 TB myself about a year and a half ago and remember that I had to do some extra setup steps to get the full 3 TB recognized in XP. There was a special step or two; I still see Seagate Disk Wizard on my desktop and some Acronis entries in Device Manager from that effort.
>
> I'm trying to figure out how to make my data visible again. Frankly, I'm not sure why changing the motherboard should have caused the drive to not be correctly recognized any more. I'm afraid to do anything, even launch Disk Wizard, for fear that the software will start formatting the drive and costing me all the data which took a lot of effort to accumulate. (And no, it isn't my porn stash ;-)
>
> Does anyone know how I can get the drive to be recognized correctly? Is there possibly a setting that has to change in the BIOS to enable the board to see the big drive as it really is?
>
> I realize that this isn't a question that really belongs on this newsgroup since I no longer have an ASUS mobo in that computer. I've posted the question at tomshardware.com but haven't received an answer yet so I'm going to try a few more places to see if I can get any useful information.
>

Go to your Add/Remove Programs control panel.

Check for any software you may have installed, like virtual disk software.

If you locate the appropriate thing, find the installer package on your
hard drive. If the installer package is still available to you, you
would uninstall the existing driver entry in Add/Remove programs,
then reinstall it. The disk should be detected on the new chipset.

The original binding, between disk and driver, was likely lost. But
without knowing what package you've installed, it's hard to guess
at details.

You could also try booting a Linux LiveCD and try GParted. Or one
of the similar type of utilities, on the chance that Linux has
been updated to deal with virtual disk drivers and associated
data pattern.

*******

Evidence of what is failing right now, may be found in the
setupapi.log file. The virtual disk driver should cause a dated
entry to appear in the setupapi.log. There can be several log
files by that name, in the windows folder. You should see, at
one time, the installation succeeds at runtime, and in your
most recent entries, the driver is failing. If you could track
down the driver, you might not even need to run Disk Wizard itself.
But you don't need to do this step if you don't want to. It's
just how I do stuff :-)

*******

If I try "Seagate Disk Wizard 3TB" in a search, one of the results
takes me here.

http://www.seagate.com/support/downloads/beyond-2tb/

Boot disk Data Disk
----------------------- -----------------------
Windows XP Use DiscWizard Software Use DiscWizard Software

Then a link off that page, goes to this Flash movie:

http://support.seagate.com/rightnow/flash/discWizard/DiscWizard_Large_3TB_XP/DiscWizard_Large_3TB_XP.htm

You would only need to do the first step, which loads the driver.
You would not need to do the partitioning steps, as the drive
letters should immediately appear. Disk Wizard is already installed,
so you'd start Disk Wizard and do this step.

I think this is the screen that is key to fixing your problem.
I don't think this step is data destructive, whereas the
others could be.

(Click "Apply" to install driver)

http://imageshack.us/a/img805/4338/allocateinstall.gif

But the evidence of what to do (i.e. do it manually),
may be noted in the setupapi.log files. And the failing
driver may leave evidence in there. The failures should
show up, with date stamps of your recent upgrade.

It could be, because of the change in Southbridge driver, that
causes a problem for the Seagate software. And it just needs
to be reinstalled as a "shim". If might even amount to just
an UpperFilter entry, in the SATA port driver. (I.e. The
necessary change could be as small as one registry entry.)
I'm just guessing at how they implemented it, because
I have no 3TB or 4TB drives here to test with.

Paul

[Kingpin]

On Sun, 12 May 2013 05:18:56 -0700 (PDT), hugh....@hotmail.com wrote:

> My ASUS M3A motherboard got replaced by an ASRock N68C-GS FX yesterday. The ASUS board was toast as a result of a stupid mistake I made which I described in another thread on this newsgroup. Upon getting it home from the shop, I find that I have a major issue and the tech is not back until Monday so I thought I'd ask here to see if I can get myself out of trouble.
>
> The problem is that one of my hard drives is not being recognized properly. I have two 750 GB drives, C and D, that are showing up just fine but the big 3TB drive, which was split into three drives, E, F, and G, is showing up as a single drive, E. When I click on it, it tells me that it hasn't been formatted and offers to format it for me. This is very distressing since I have over 2 TB of data on that drive that I do NOT want to lose.
>
> I'm running Windows XP (SP3) 32-bit. All of the drives are SATA, including the 3TB one. I installed the 3 TB myself about a year and a half ago and remember that I had to do some extra setup steps to get the full 3 TB recognized in XP. There was a special step or two; I still see Seagate Disk Wizard on my desktop and some Acronis entries in Device Manager from that effort.
>
> I'm trying to figure out how to make my data visible again. Frankly, I'm not sure why changing the motherboard should have caused the drive to not be correctly recognized any more. I'm afraid to do anything, even launch Disk Wizard, for fear that the software will start formatting the drive and costing me all the data which took a lot of effort to accumulate. (And no, it isn't my porn stash ;-)
>
> Does anyone know how I can get the drive to be recognized correctly? Is there possibly a setting that has to change in the BIOS to enable the board to see the big drive as it really is?
>
> I realize that this isn't a question that really belongs on this newsgroup since I no longer have an ASUS mobo in that computer. I've posted the question at tomshardware.com but haven't received an answer yet so I'm going to try a few more places to see if I can get any useful information.

First step is to dump XP in favour of Windows 7 or 8. It is much more secure.

Next, a 3 TB drive should be set up with GPT, an acronym for GUID partition table. An
easier way is to put the big drive in an external USB case.

[Rhino]

Tell me more.

I've been wondering if my 3TB drive would be better situated in an
external case now that I have both a desktop and a laptop that might
both like to access the data on the large drive.

But I'm not sure what the implications would be. Would moving the drive
to an external case mean that the data would be visible to both
computers via USB WITHOUT having to reformat the drive in any way? I
don't have a backup of the data on the large drive and re-acquiring the
data would be a huge undertaking. (And yes, I know I should have a
backup but I just can't afford it.)

The laptop is already running Win8. Upgrading the desktop to Win7 or
Win8 might well be a lot easier if that big hard drive was off in its
own case as long as I could still get at the data from both computers.
I've been wondering for a while what the implication of the OS upgrade
would be on the 3TB drive.

--
Rhino

[Paul]

The problem you'd have, is switching from Acronis Extended Capacity Manager
operating mode, to straight-forward GPT (GUID partition table). If you
had a second large drive, to hold the files while fooling around, it
would be a lot simpler. It may also help, if the 3 TB isn't full. If
it is full of files (all three partitions are full), there would be no
wiggle room for re-organizing the storage on it (thus requiring a
second disk). If it was sparsely filled, you may be able to move stuff
around enough, such that nothing is present above 2.2TB, then use a
partition manager, to attempt a transition from 2.2TB MBR based,
to 3.0TB GPT based. Once switched over to GPT, you no longer can access
it from WinXP, but you can from the other OSes. And once it is GPT, you
can resize it from 2.2TB to 3.0TB, and gain access to all the room again.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GUID_Partition_Table

In the other thread though, we're still discussing why your upper partition
is broken, and I presented a theory there. The theory I have, is that the new
NVidia Southbridge ports (RAID capable), use metadata, and the driver shrinks
the claimed size of the first (physical) disk drive. And that prevents attempts
to read the very end of the second partition. While the drive was on the
Asus M3A motherboard, the first disk was 2.2TB, whereas, while it is
sitting on the NVidia port, it is 2.199 TB. And that claimed size,
prevents reading a tiny region near the end (0.001TB hidden). That's
the basic concept.

This is my representation of what happens, by switching over to the Nvidia.
This would not have happened, if the second partition had not been extended,
to the very end of the physical space. (Leaving a few cylinders would likely
have been enough.)

NVidia preventing access to the very end of the partition -----+
Not sure if any metadata is written or not, in the JBOD case. |
v
+------+-----+-----------------------+------------------------+--------+
| MBR | gap | 746GB NTFS partition | 1453GB NTFS partition |metadata|
+------+-----+-----------------------+------------------------+--------+

+------+------+-------+-----------------------+
| gap | MBR | gap | 746GB NTFS partition |
+------+------+-------+-----------------------+

Anyway, I did an experiment, where I was able to move the extended capacity
746GB, down to a lower partition, and rescue the files while the data
was down there (using Linux LiveCD). But that requires enough space, for
it to work. Without space, you need a second big drive of some sort.

Even borrowing or renting a drive would be good enough, while
doing recovery. You could secure erase it, or zero it, when
you're finished.

As for the NVidia problem, moving the drive to a non-NVidia computer,
installing the virtual driver software, may be enough to see all
three partitions. Of course, once you install the virtual driver
from Acronis, you can't completely clean it from the OS. If you
do this to someone else's computer (install the following package),
you'd want to back up their C: partition, so you can undo the
install of it later. You do the backup of C:, before running this
installer (virtualdisksetup.msi file inside the ZIP). That would be
my advice. Easier than trying to clean it up with Regedit and a
pair of tweezers afterwards :-)

http://kb.acronis.com/system/files/content/2013/01/38937/virtualdisksetup.zip

Paul

[Rhino]

Yes I read your theory and just finished a lengthy reply to it.

> This is my representation of what happens, by switching over to the Nvidia.
> This would not have happened, if the second partition had not been
> extended,
> to the very end of the physical space. (Leaving a few cylinders would
> likely
> have been enough.)
>
> NVidia preventing access to the very end of the partition -----+
> Not sure if any metadata is written or not, in the JBOD case. |
> v
> +------+-----+-----------------------+------------------------+--------+
> | MBR | gap | 746GB NTFS partition | 1453GB NTFS partition |metadata|
> +------+-----+-----------------------+------------------------+--------+
>
> +------+------+-------+-----------------------+
> | gap | MBR | gap | 746GB NTFS partition |
> +------+------+-------+-----------------------+
>
> Anyway, I did an experiment, where I was able to move the extended capacity
> 746GB, down to a lower partition, and rescue the files while the data
> was down there (using Linux LiveCD). But that requires enough space, for
> it to work. Without space, you need a second big drive of some sort.
>

Your theory sounds reasonable enough to me but I don't know a whole lot
about how all this partitioning stuff works. Every time I start to think
I'm understanding how drives are organized, the next generation of OSes
and space management comes along and suddenly it's a whole new ball game.

> Even borrowing or renting a drive would be good enough, while
> doing recovery. You could secure erase it, or zero it, when
> you're finished.
>

That's a novel idea. I've never heard of hard disk rentals but maybe I
could manage something like that. Maybe Canada Computers would do
something like that. I could ask around. We're talking about making that
an external drive, right? The computer already has 3 SATA hard drives
and a SATA DVD burner. I assume the external drive would plug in via USB.

> As for the NVidia problem, moving the drive to a non-NVidia computer,
> installing the virtual driver software, may be enough to see all
> three partitions. Of course, once you install the virtual driver
> from Acronis, you can't completely clean it from the OS. If you
> do this to someone else's computer (install the following package),
> you'd want to back up their C: partition, so you can undo the
> install of it later. You do the backup of C:, before running this
> installer (virtualdisksetup.msi file inside the ZIP). That would be
> my advice. Easier than trying to clean it up with Regedit and a
> pair of tweezers afterwards :-)
>
> http://kb.acronis.com/system/files/content/2013/01/38937/virtualdisksetup.zip
>

If I were to successfully rent a 3 TB external drive and copy my data to
it, what would happen next? Clearly, I need to get that data back on to
my own 3 TB drive eventually. Would I need to use a different program to
partition the drive, then copy the data back?

I wouldn't be adverse to upgrading to Win7 or Win8, although it would be
a challenge to come up with the money. Maybe I should get an external
closure for my own drive at the same time to make it accessible to both
the desktop and laptop going forward. Or go with this GPT scheme which
is presumably still usable in Win7 and Win8 (and hopefully whatever
follows Win8).

--
Rhino

[Paul]

I think you know the options by now.

1) Old OS in picture, stick with Acronis Extended Capacity Manager.
Either that, or simply bid goodbye to the upper 746GB or so.
You and I both have WinXP, and Acronis might be the only way to
keep all the OSes happy (+/- whatever screw-ups Acronis promotes
in the process - I'm not all that excited about this solution).

2) If all OSes support GPT, make rental disk GPT, copy data as you see
fit, then reformat the original disk and make it GPT. Copy the data
back. Access via more modern OSes as a result.

3) I can't say what will happen, if you stick the 3TB in a USB enclosure.
It's possible the filter driver will still install itself. I don't
really understand what triggers that driver to install in the first
place. On my machine, the moldy old Acronis driver seems to be able
to "shim" any new drive I connect to the computer. Maybe it will do
that for a USB connected computer ? What the Acronis driver doesn't
seem to be able to do, is replace another Acronis driver.

If you already have the USB enclosure, you can just try moving the 3TB
into the enclosure and see what happens.

As for testing my USB enclosure here, I'll have to think about
what way I could test, that wouldn't take too many hours of work.
Any time big disks are involved, some step always stretches into
hours. (I don't really want to have to load that Acronis driver
on any other computers, because it's a bitch to remove. That means
using a clean OS of some sort.)

If you have any kind of PCI or PCI Express SATA card, that might
be sufficient to solve the "NVidia logjam". You'd want to make sure
it wasn't one of those VIA "SATA 150 only" cards... I don't have
any separate SATA cards here, unfortunately. So no test results for them.

It's either that, or figure out some way to run the Nvidia
ports in "IDE emulation mode", where the stupid thing doesn't
clip off the top of the 2.2TB zone. If you could connect the
disk, even temporarily, to some other non-NVidia solution,
you could use a partition manager to resize the broken partition.
That would work, because the non-NVidia computer would not be
clipping the partition. Then, by shrinking the upper partition,
and moving the end so its not right up against the 2.2TB boundary,
you could then safely move the 3TB drive back to your NVidia motherboard.
Then it would work OK.

+------+-----+-----------------------+----------------------+-+--------+
| MBR | gap | 746GB NTFS partition | 1450GB NTFS partition| |metadata|
+------+-----+-----------------------+----------------------+-+--------+

Paul