[SOLVED] Hdd Reader Question

Drew125

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I have worked with hard drive docks for a while now, but this blows my mind. I bought a sabrent dock from amazon. I spent 3 days coping data from other drives to a 4 TB WD drive. I placed the 4TB drive in my other reader, a inateck, and it says un-formated no partition table found. In a panic i plugged it in the sabrent dock and it reads fine. What gives? The only difference i can see is the Sabrent dock does not list the model of the drive but says SABRENT SABRENT (0104) no matter what drive is in it.
 

Drew125

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Sometimes Windows simply lists whatever the adapter/dock's controller provides as info.

But apps like CrystalDiskInfo should be able to read the HDD details.
If only that were it. Im on linux i should have put that in the first post. Same Hdd 2 different docks. One dock wont read the Hdd at all, only says un-formated. But reports the correct amount of total space on the drive The sabrent dock reads it just fine and allows me read the NTFS file system.
 
If you partition and format the drive in a 4KB dock, then it won't work in a 512B dock.

If you partition and format the drive in a 512B dock, then it won't work in a 4KB dock., but it will work inside your computer (because your computer is a 512B environment).
 

Drew125

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If you partition and format the drive in a 4KB dock, then it won't work in a 512B dock.

If you partition and format the drive in a 512B dock, then it won't work in a 4KB dock., but it will work inside your computer (because your computer is a 512B environment).
That's what I thought. I will post back what the new dock is when i can. Can a pc read both 4K and 512 blocks? I've been a computer repair tech for a long time, but I've never dug into the allocation unit etc for drives until recently. I thought all drives were 512.
 
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Most internal drives are 512e, some are 4Kn, and some can be low level formatted to be either 4Kn or 512e (via an ATA command which affects the firmware).

In external enclosures the USB-SATA bridge firmware transparently translates between 512e and 4Kn, so that the host OS sees a 4Kn mass storage device rather than the actual 512e drive behind the bridge.
 

Drew125

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I did some testing. The drive in question 4 TB WD Red is in fact formatted as a 4K. I am kinda confused here. The old dock wont read it. The new one will. How ever, I put a drive I know is formatted 512 in the new dock and it read it without issues, even reported it to be a 512. Unless the old dock does not support 4K I don't get that.
 

mundial

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As others have pointed out this is most likely a sector size issue.

However, also bear in mind that different onboard chipsets in hdd docks can sometimes vary results in terms of disk access.

I try to use hdddocks which use Asmedia chipsets as opposed to JMicron.