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USB hard drive question

  • Thread starter Av8tor1
  • Start date
I was encrypting one of my portable USB hard drives with Win7's bit locker when I had to pause it (using the pause button in bit locker)

but now that I want to resume, the drive is no longer recognized by windows... for the last couple hours the LCD display on the drive just says "scanning"

its a 500g verbatim USB 2.0 drive that I had previously formatted using NTFS

Out of desperation I tried verbatim's fat32 format utility, but it doesnt see it either..

ummm it would be nice to resume, it was about 95% complete (after encrypting for 8-10hrs sheesh), but if i gotta format and start over so be it... but right now I cant do neither

ummm ???
 
Sounds like the drive formatting is hosed, but you should get some sort of error. Perhaps there are power saving functions and it went to "sleep" permanently when it was paused?

If there are Windows 98SE drivers for the unit then you might be able to use SpinRite to recover the drive. If not you might be able to open up the case and plug the drive in directly to the HD controller. We have an adaptor at work so we can take laptop drives and plug them into a desktop to fix 'em. Spinrite saved the day many times.

http://www.grc.com/sr/spinrite.htm
http://www.grc.com/sr/faq.htm

A partition manager like Partition Magic or good old FDISK might be needed to remove the old partitions to start over.
 
Is the device recognized at all by BIOS or Device Manager? If not the drive might be totally hosed. RMA time.

Try CutePM - freeware partition manager

http://www.cutepm.com/

Spinrite only works on formatted drives.
 
Is the device recognized at all by BIOS or Device Manager? If not the drive might be totally hosed. RMA time.

Try CutePM - freeware partition manager

http://www.cutepm.com/

Spinrite only works on formatted drives.

No, not recognized at all.... and ive tried a partition manager too, ugh... not looking too good for the home team

Ive emailed vibatim about the problem... evidently it dont like bitlocker, or maybe it was the ntfs formatting, then the encrypting of folders with truecrypt, then the encrypting of the drive with bitlocker

ummm, NAN I think i may have went too far LOLOL

(I hear crissy laughing at me)

dang, and its less then a week old, maybe paperweight time :p

oh well at least I havent open the box of the second one :0o:

Butch
 
There was a time when you could get into the HD controller BIOS through the assembler debugger and start a hardware low-level format but those days are long gone. You can still find tools to do this with SCSI drives though.

Depending on where you bought the drive send it back as DOA ;)
 
I cant, its got all my financial and tax records, passwords, 12 yrs worth of exams and student records... I cant risk anyone fixing it

sigh.... if it wasnt for that, you can bet Id be asking for a RMA

now you see why I triple encrypted it, it was to be a "mother of all crashes" backup

wahhhhh
 
new high tech paper weight?

have you tried. complete power down. disconnect the power cord for 30 mins? Might be something lingering
 
more then once... and in every possible combination I could think of,

its a pretty paperweight too :p

I called verbatim tech support, well I spoke with some call center in another country (whom i have many friends from and love dearly but omg I hate their tech support lines)

and even though i told them that i had an identical unit that works just fine on the same usb port and gave them the whole story.... they told me I need to buy a wye cable, that my laptop didn't have enough power at the usb ports

omg, thank goodness for good antipostal meds
 
  • #10
**Laughs at Av

I'm sorry, but this is pretty funny....really :). You go to such extremes. How much more secure can you get than an EXTERNAL hard drive unplugged from the computer? ;) I seriously doubt all the encryption is needed for the couple of minutes you'll actually have it plugged in and running.

It looks like Bitlocker is having all kinds of problems via a quick google search. It's killing MBRs and such.

I doubt it's a power issue regarding the USB ports. You might want to download and try a program called Killdisk http://www.killdisk.com/

It should still be free. If not, email me and I can make you a copy of my older version. My version doesn't run off the OS, it runs in pseudo-DOS or whatever they call it now (it runs on startup via "Press any key to boot off CD"). If that doesn't do it, I'll see what else I can come up with.

Crystal

---------- Post added at 01:25 PM ---------- Previous post was at 12:59 PM ----------

It may be a Windows 7 issue and nothing really to do with Bitlocker.

Have you tried going into computer management and seeing if it's recognized there?

Control Panel
Admin tools
Computer management
Disk management

If you can see the verbatim there right click on the drive header and select "Online".

I would recommend opening up the new verbatim drive and plug it in. If it works, the first drive just could have been faulty and died. If it doesn't work either, then it's something to do with Windows 7. Good luck!
 
  • #11
Hush woman!!! (omg i knew that was coming :p )

yeah, the new drive works fine...

here is the latest info using a little usb utility I found:

Device Descriptor:
bcdUSB: 0x0000
bDeviceClass: 0x00
bDeviceSubClass: 0x00
bDeviceProtocol: 0x00
bMaxPacketSize0: 0x00 (0)
idVendor: 0x0000
idProduct: 0x0000
bcdDevice: 0x0000
iManufacturer: 0x00
iProduct: 0x00
iSerialNumber: 0x00
bNumConfigurations: 0x00

ConnectionStatus: DeviceFailedEnumeration
Current Config Value: 0x00
Device Bus Speed: Low
Device Address: 0x00
Open Pipes: 0

way out of my league, but the prob appears to be an issue with the drive and verbatims self contained usb interface... it has a LCD readout and it just says keeps on saying "scanning" and you can feel the drive running

the instructions that came with it said that if you format it in NTFS, it would do that for a few moments... well I think the combination of me using that format and a full drive encrytion just screwed the pooch LOL

I emailed then and they referred me back to the tech line which kept telling me I need a wye cable

so, unless I want to return it to newegg, I have a pretty paperweight.

On the other one, I didnt encrypt the whole drive, I used NTFS and broke it down into 5 encrypted virtual drives... it seems to be able to deal with that

do you know of anyway to reset the verbatim self contained interface?... the only ref i could find to this problem said to remove the power source, but you cant with the verbatim... this particular model features an "always on" interface ( i assume it uses some type of battery or capacitor) either way it is non removable.

ugh

I hear you giggling :p
 
  • #12
Does it stay powered on when you unplug it (USB and power cables)? Let the power storage exhaust itself .
 
  • #13
yes, it constantly gives the drive name and free space , there is no power cable...

It's one of the selling points for this model

warren, youre giggling too :p
 
  • #14
I can't believe they would engineer it without some sort of reset...wait a minute...we're talking engineers here. See if there is a pinhole somewhere like you find on the front of computer CD/DVD drives.
 
  • #15
nothing that i see
 
  • #16
Well Newegg's return policy doesn't seem too restrictive. You haven't taken a claw hammer to it so it not "displaying signs of physical damage". If it hasn't been 30 days and you still have the original packaging...
 
  • #17
I know but I cant risk it, its got all my financial and school records.... we are talking taxes, bank accounts, 401k, 403b accounts, passwords etc etc

If the encryption would have been complete then maybe, (big maybe) but it isnt...

sigh....Ill just eat it and chalk it up to live and learn
Av
 
  • #19
oh geeze...

nice knowing im not alone, but its also bad knowing im not alone LOL
now i dont have any trust in the other unit, sheesh
thats why I wanted two, for redundancy sake

thanks for the heads up, prob saved me some heartache down the road
Ill just have to spend a weekend burning a dvd backup archive, no other way to feel that warm and fuzzy feeling of confidence

wahhhhhh

Av
 
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