Storage Solutions External drive issue

maddy_in65

maddy_in65

Adept
I have 3TB Seagate backup plus external drive, it was used to backup all PCs important data. I decided to use internal drive of backup plus drive in one of the NAS server.
I carefully removed internal drive from external drive without any physical damage and installed it in NAS server but to my surprise, server shows 3TB blank space( one 375gb blank space and other 2.5TB blank space).
I installed drive again in external drive enclosure and now it shows all data as it is. The NAS server has Ubuntu server OS and 2 more drive installed in it. I am not sure what has gone wrong, is it OS which shows incorrect data. How can i use external drive as internal drive.

BTW external drive has 2 partition, 1 TB formatted with ext3 and 2 TB formatted with NTFS.
 
Appears that Seagate has some "software thing" (may be firmware or encryption) on PCB of external drive. Nothing wrong with OS, IMO.
 
vyral_143 said:
Appears that Seagate has some "software thing" (may be firmware or encryption) on PCB of external drive. Nothing wrong with OS, IMO.
Click to expand...
Does this mean I cant use it as internal hard drive. Is there any work around?
TIA!

vivek.krishnan said:
Post screenshots.

I think it was showing as RAW
Click to expand...
Vivek, I will post screenshot in evening. BTW what screenshot you are looking for.
TIA!

nRiTeCh said:
BTW does it contain any data...did you lost any data or was it blank when you tried using it internally?
Click to expand...
No data lost when I put internal drive back in external hard drive enclosure. It worked as expected.
 
maddy_in65 said:
Does this mean I cant use it as internal hard drive. Is there any work around?
TIA!


Vivek, I will post screenshot in evening. BTW what screenshot you are looking for.
TIA!


No data lost when I put internal drive back in external hard drive enclosure. It worked as expected.
Click to expand...

The SS which shows the type of HDD filesystem and the SS of 100% free space.
 
newuser990 said:
I thought that was only with WD drives. this forced encryption is the only reason i dont buy WD externals.
Click to expand...

I am not 100% sure about this. That was my inference :)

maddy_in65 said:
Does this mean I cant use it as internal hard drive. Is there any work around?
TIA!
Click to expand...

If it's encryption related, you might not be able to directly. But once HDD is in Desktop and can be formatted, you might be able to use it with data loss. At present, as Vivek said above, screen captures would help to narrow down.
 
vyral_143 said:
I am not 100% sure about this. That was my inference :)



If it's encryption related, you might not be able to directly. But once HDD is in Desktop and can be formatted, you might be able to use it with data loss. At present, as Vivek said above, screen captures would help to narrow down.
Click to expand...

I dont think there is any encryption. It would be a FS which is not readable.
 
@vivek.krishnan
As requested, i have attached HDD SS here
1) Internal HDD installed in original enclosure:

XZhsuK9.png

pvoZqVo.png


I just noticed 2.2 TB Free space even though 1.1TB and 1.9TB drive present. It was not present when i checked drive in morning. I am now worried of the data, looks like i might loose it.

2) Internal drive removed from enclosure and installed it in PC running Ubuntu server OS:

GGQNOEJ.png


Z4L0duJ.png


N3Qm10g.png


I got error "Invalid partition table on /dev/sdc - wrong signature 0" when i started Gparted.
I ran "sudo fdisk /dec/sdc" to solve partition table issue and i got
message "The partition table has been altered!". I restarted PC but i can still see blank partition. Please note that i didnt get such error when i connect drive with enclosure.
 
Last edited:
First off, beware that a 3TB Seagate is a recipe for disaster all in itself. If it's the notorious ST3000DM001 they have close to a 40% annual failure rate.

Seagate does not do any encryption or other "tricks" to lock you out of the drive. The issue is your sector size. The drives are physically 4K sector size, however they emulate a 512 byte sector size when natively connected via a SATA connection. The USB -> SATA bridges that Seagate uses however re-emulate a 4K sector size back to the system. So what's happening is that your partition table is written to fill a 4K sector, but the sectors are only an emulated 512 byte size now. So the MBR is needlessly spread across 8 virtual sectors now, however it should fit within a single sector.

All you need to do is connect it to a Windows system without the enclosure. Run testdisk from CGSecurity and search for the partition. Once it finds it you'll have the option to let it write a new partition table back to the drive (which will now be a 512 byte table and reference the right offset).

Enjoy!
 
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Your nas is not uefi compliant and hence does not show the gpt partition which is what the hard drive has been partitioned as, any hard disk above 2 tb will show up as 2 tb + balance. Hence the data is not shown in the nas as it does not recognize gpt
 
JaredDM said:
First off, beware that a 3TB Seagate is a recipe for disaster all in itself. If it's the notorious ST3000DM001 they have close to a 40% annual failure rate.

Seagate does not do any encryption or other "tricks" to lock you out of the drive. The issue is your sector size. The drives are physically 4K sector size, however they emulate a 512 byte sector size when natively connected via a SATA connection. The USB -> SATA bridges that Seagate uses however re-emulate a 4K sector size back to the system. So what's happening is that your partition table is written to fill a 4K sector, but the sectors are only an emulated 512 byte size now. So the MBR is needlessly spread across 8 virtual sectors now, however it should fit within a single sector.

All you need to do is connect it to a Windows system without the enclosure. Run testdisk from CGSecurity and search for the partition. Once it finds it you'll have the option to let it write a new partition table back to the drive (which will now be a 512 byte table and reference the right offset).

Enjoy!
Click to expand...

i installed testdisk on Ubuntu system and did deeper search which tool hell lot of time. I got error message "Invalid Fat boot sector" but didn't get option to repair it or any other option.
I dont know how to solve this issue.
 
Just a few questions.
1. Are you direct SATA connected (not using the USB bridge)
2. Have you tried it from a Windows system as I originally said to do?
3. Did you format the drive after you connected it and it didn't recognize the partitioning?
 
JaredDM said:
Just a few questions.
1. Are you direct SATA connected (not using the USB bridge)
2. Have you tried it from a Windows system as I originally said to do?
3. Did you format the drive after you connected it and it didn't recognize the partitioning?
Click to expand...

Yes it is SATA connected.
I dont have PC having windows installed, Both PCs running linux. I have laptop running windows 10.
Drive was not formatted, I wanted to recover data first. I ordered 2 TB drive from ebay. I will transfer all data to new drive and format it later to use as internal drive in PC.
 
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