[SOLVED] Problem with external HDD recognition ?

Beauvyne

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May 6, 2013
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18,520
Have a 2020 Ryzen 7 laptop and a 2021 Ryzen 7 desktop. Both are running Windows 11 with bios and drivers up to date.

Have 5 leftover SATA hard drives of varying size age all GPT configured and formatted as NTFS. I intend to use them for backup of different file types using a Sabrent DS-UTC2 USB3.1 two bay docking station. Everything works fine with the laptop but the desktop PC will only recognize 2 of the 5 hard drives (a Seagate 1tb and a Seagate 3tb). It will not recognize a Seagate 2tb , a WD 1tb, and a WD 500gb.

I've tried using two other USB 3.0 external hard drive enclosures and the drive recognition issue is consistent. In all cases, the external device (enclosure or dock) is recognized, but not the drives in them (well, 3 of the 5). I've also tried every USB (USB 2.0, 3.2 gen 1, and USB C) port on the desktop, including two on a PCIe card, with the same result and have tried every flavor of USB cable. Have unplugged all devices except the external drive, too. I've even tried changing out the AC adapters for the devices. USB thumb drives (USB 2.0 and 3.0) seem to work fine. My initial thinking is that it is a bios issue, but am not sure. I have played around with changing the legacy USB setting in the bios to enabled, disabled, and auto. with no change in behavior.

Internal drives in the desktop consist of a M.2 NVMe Gen 4 1tb and a 500gb sata ssd. There is also a DVD writer installed.

When I built this desktop last year, I did a clean install of Windows 10 and then upgraded to Windows 11. Though I built this desktop about 6 months ago, I had not tried using these drives until recently.

Any suggestions appreciated.
 
Solution
Solved.

Automount was disabled in Partition Manager and the Virtual Disk service was not always starting (set to manual). Not sure the latter was an issue, but Automount was definitely a problem.

Beauvyne

Distinguished
May 6, 2013
3
0
18,520
Solved.

Automount was disabled in Partition Manager and the Virtual Disk service was not always starting (set to manual). Not sure the latter was an issue, but Automount was definitely a problem.
 
Solution