External Hard Drives Turned To RAW

[jwardward]

I have an ongoing issue with my Windows 10 PC. I have a USB 3.0 dual external hard drive dock that contains two drives that I use for backup. Twice last year both drives in the dock became unrecognizable by my system. At that time, rather than trying to solve the issue, I just reformatted both drives and ran the backups once more. Annoying, but not the end of the world. In my troubleshooting steps, I decided to replace the dual USB 3.0 external hard drive dock with a new one from a different manufacturer.

Yesterday after a Windows backup, both of the drives again became unrecognizable. The Windows Disk Management application says that they are RAW but healthy. I'd really like to figure out why this is happening and if there is a way get them formatted again without losing the data. I can, of course, reformat and rust run the backups again, but that isn't really solving the long-term and ongoing problem.

It's very frustrating.

Thanks for your help.

 

[Barty1884]

Can you link the specific dock you have? Some of the dual-bay docks are intended for cloning purposes morseo than 2 drive bays for backup.
Are the drives configured in RAID etc?

Does this dock accommodate 3.5" drives? If so, does it require additional power from the wall? If not, I doubly a USB port can adequately power dual 3.5" drives...... even a single 3.5" drive enclosure should need additional power.

Could be anything from a failing drive, power surge, incorrect shutdown etc.

I'd start by running health checks of the drive(s).
Use the diagnostic tool from the relevant manufacturer's website (WD, SeaGate, Toshiba etc)

Just because Disk Management says "healthy", doesn't mean they are, necessarily.

 

[jwardward]

The current dock is a Thermaltake BlacX. My previous dock was a Sabrent.

Both of the docks have external power. And the drives I use in them are 3.5" drives. Both are WD drives. Different sizes. No RAID. I can safely rule out power surges and incorrect shutdowns. Everything is run off a UPS. I have not yet run WD diagnostics on them, but I will. I suspect that they are OK, however. It has happened to both drives three times now. With two different dual bay docks. I'm 99% certain that each failure has occurred after a Windows Update. I know for a fact that my failure yesterday came right after I noticed that an update was waiting. I chose to "update and restart". Then noticed both drives not being recognized.

 

[jwardward]

I ran WD diagnostics (extended test) on both drives and they both passed with no problems.