Question NTFS Formatted Drive only Shows on one computer

Apr 25, 2021
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Hey Guys,

I'm trying to figure out an issue with a friend's external harddrive. He has a 4TB G-Drive with USB-C that's been formatted in NTSC. It has approx. 200 GB of data that is only read on the WIN 10 machine that he formatted the drive on. When he takes to both a WIN7 and other WIN10 machine it mounts but shows up as an empty drive. Is it possible that there was an encryption option enabled thus only allowing the drive to be seen on his computer? I asked if he remember such an option but he's about as tech savvy as a corpse. I was also thinking maybe driver issues but the drive mounts on the other computers so that's likely not the case. If it happens to be an encryption issue, is there a way around it on the other systems?

Thank you
 
Apr 25, 2021
13
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I have no idea, that's what i'm trying to figure out what's what. It's my friend's drive and as I said, he's a techno-idiot so who knows what he clicked when he reformatted it.
 
This is not a foolproof method of determining whether it's bitlockered but it is the easiest.
Put it back in the computer that it works in and check out the icon of the drive in a file browser. Is there a lock image on the drive (either locked or unlocked)? If yes, the drive has been bitlockered and needs to be decrypted before the data can be seen in other systems.

Note that the drive could be encrypted by other means/programs besides bitlocker. You would need to examine the drive with those programs installed, on the original computer it was encrypted with, to verify whether it was encrypted by other softwares.
 
I'm trying to figure out an issue with a friend's external harddrive. He has a 4TB G-Drive with USB-C
is only read on the WIN 10 machine that he formatted the drive on. When he takes to both a WIN7 and other WIN10 machine it mounts but shows up as an empty drive.
Windows 7 pc probably doesn't have USB-C port to connect to.
Are you removing external drive from enclosure and connecting it directly with sata cables instead?
 
Apr 25, 2021
13
0
10
This is not a foolproof method of determining whether it's bitlockered but it is the easiest.
Put it back in the computer that it works in and check out the icon of the drive in a file browser. Is there a lock image on the drive (either locked or unlocked)? If yes, the drive has been bitlockered and needs to be decrypted before the data can be seen in other systems.

Note that the drive could be encrypted by other means/programs besides bitlocker. You would need to examine the drive with those programs installed, on the original computer it was encrypted with, to verify whether it was encrypted by other softwares.

I didn't notice any lock on the drive icon in the letter tray. I'm wondering if G-DRIVE has a form of encryption. I need to give a more thorough look when I can remote into his computer again in a little bit. If worse comes to worse I can backup and reformat if that's guaranteed to get around the possibly existing encryption.
 
I didn't notice any lock on the drive icon in the letter tray. I'm wondering if G-DRIVE has a form of encryption. I need to give a more thorough look when I can remote into his computer again in a little bit. If worse comes to worse I can backup and reformat if that's guaranteed to get around the possibly existing encryption.
Yup.

Backup.
Use diskpart to remove all partitions.
Create new partition and format it.
Put data back.
 
Apr 25, 2021
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Nevermind about the speed issues, it was a particular folder from another drive that was transferring slow. I think I'm all good (for now)

Thank you so much for all your help.
 
Apr 25, 2021
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It seems that any of the folders I backed up from the problem drive to my second drive transfer back at about 3mb/sec. Other Folders from the back up drive back to the Now clean drive go at normal rates. WTF is going on?