(Don't know if this is the right place. It could have been hardware or WIndows 10 too, as I can't determine if the issue is hardware or OS related.)
Backstory:
I bought several bare 4 TB HD's and a USB 3.0 dock for backup and archival purposes and have been using it for some months. Last week I decided to get a USB 3.0 dual-dock with built-in "pushbutton" cloning to use when any of the backup drives are reaching EOL.
So here's the problem:
A 4 TB HD, Simple, Basic, NTFS, shows a single healthy primary partition. It has been in use for months and contains lots of data. It was formatted in the single-slot dock. Now, when I move that disk to the other (dual-slot) dock it is recognized by Windows but is not assigned a drive letter. Checking with Window's Disk Management app it shows as Healthy (GPT Protective Partition) and, of course the data in inaccessible. Likewise, using a brand new 4 TB drive, formatted as simple basic NTFS in the dual-dock—with a few files added to make sure it will read and write—when unmounted from the dual-dock and mounted in the single dock, shows as Healthy (GPT Protective Partition) .
What I'm seeing is that a disk initialized in either of these docks can only be used in the dock in which it was initialized . Needless to say, with more than 2 TB of data on the disk , I can't change it to MBR to remove the protection without data destruction because MBR can't handle more then 2 TB of data. That means I need to mount the drive in the dock in which it was initialized, initialize an empty 4 TB drive in the other dock and then copy data from one to the other. I can live with that but I shouldn't have to…
Except I still have disks which are only accessible when mounted in the dock that initialized them.
Which means if the dock which made the disk goes tits-up down the line I am screwed.
So, I think my question is, how can I initialize an HD so it can be mounted on either (or any) dock and/or on any system, or put another way, how can I prevent an HD from becoming locked to a particular piece of hardware?
[Win10/64 1909 Build 18363.1379)]
[Single slot dock is branded Orico]
[Dual-slot dock is branded EZ-Dock 3.0]
[HD's are all HGST 2TB]
Backstory:
I bought several bare 4 TB HD's and a USB 3.0 dock for backup and archival purposes and have been using it for some months. Last week I decided to get a USB 3.0 dual-dock with built-in "pushbutton" cloning to use when any of the backup drives are reaching EOL.
So here's the problem:
A 4 TB HD, Simple, Basic, NTFS, shows a single healthy primary partition. It has been in use for months and contains lots of data. It was formatted in the single-slot dock. Now, when I move that disk to the other (dual-slot) dock it is recognized by Windows but is not assigned a drive letter. Checking with Window's Disk Management app it shows as Healthy (GPT Protective Partition) and, of course the data in inaccessible. Likewise, using a brand new 4 TB drive, formatted as simple basic NTFS in the dual-dock—with a few files added to make sure it will read and write—when unmounted from the dual-dock and mounted in the single dock, shows as Healthy (GPT Protective Partition) .
What I'm seeing is that a disk initialized in either of these docks can only be used in the dock in which it was initialized . Needless to say, with more than 2 TB of data on the disk , I can't change it to MBR to remove the protection without data destruction because MBR can't handle more then 2 TB of data. That means I need to mount the drive in the dock in which it was initialized, initialize an empty 4 TB drive in the other dock and then copy data from one to the other. I can live with that but I shouldn't have to…
Except I still have disks which are only accessible when mounted in the dock that initialized them.
Which means if the dock which made the disk goes tits-up down the line I am screwed.
So, I think my question is, how can I initialize an HD so it can be mounted on either (or any) dock and/or on any system, or put another way, how can I prevent an HD from becoming locked to a particular piece of hardware?
[Win10/64 1909 Build 18363.1379)]
[Single slot dock is branded Orico]
[Dual-slot dock is branded EZ-Dock 3.0]
[HD's are all HGST 2TB]