[SOLVED] Those Laptop HDD caddies

[plast0000]

I got one of those 2.5INCH HDD caddies that mount in place of optical drives. Mounted under Windows 10, It boots fine and works fine. but after doing I/O operations and rebooting for whatever reason. It starts sabotaging the booting process. it takes Windows too long to boot. after it finally starts up. task manager shows disk activity for that drive as 100% 0KB read and 0KB write. and can't be accessed by file explorer. and built int disk management utility gets stuck while trying to read my partition tables.
It can boot normally after pulling out the caddy
OR by rebooting into linux, linux can boot just fine, access the HDD just fine and do I/O just fine.
after doing and I/O operations on linux and rebooting back into Windows 10. Windows can finally boot up successfully and do I/O normally AND does not show 100% disk activity for no reason.

HDD is 2.5inch seagate. GUID partition table with only 1 NTFS volume (formatted yesterday, hardly anything on it).
No OS' are installed on it. Windows is installed on a separate SSD and linux boots from a USB thumb.

So, can there be any explanation for what's going on? what does Windows do to leave this volume in such state where it prevents Windows from working properly from here until the disk is accessed by a linux OS?
are there any means of fixing this>

 

[Grobe]

Sounds like a Windows problem, but I would recommend check out a couple of things anyway:

• Watch the HDD smart data to see if the disk itself isn't corrupted. You may use an app in Windows (Crystal disk or something similar name), or when using Linux - most distros have this "disk" tool, there is a little menu to click on to get to "smart data & self tests".
• Check if the RAM isn't faulty. I assume Windows have it's own tool for that, but I would be more confident the RAM is ok if it pass the test using Memtest86+.
• And then of course - Check for malware. Maybe a reinstall ow windows 10 will fix the issue.

 

[plast0000]

Sounds like a Windows problem, but I would recommend check out a couple of things anyway:

• Watch the HDD smart data to see if the disk itself isn't corrupted. You may use an app in Windows (Crystal disk or something similar name), or when using Linux - most distros have this "disk" tool, there is a little menu to click on to get to "smart data & self tests".
• Check if the RAM isn't faulty. I assume Windows have it's own tool for that, but I would be more confident the RAM is ok if it pass the test using Memtest86+.
• And then of course - Check for malware. Maybe a reinstall ow windows 10 will fix the issue.

• My Windows 10 install is fresh. just installed v1903 yesterday. am confident enough that there's no malware, all my disks were formatted and I use secure boot except when I use linux.
• I face no memory issues.
• SMART doesn't report anything negative. I checked using crystal diskInfo and seagate seatools

 

[plast0000]

So does atleast anybody know why does that HDD work well with linux but makes Windows feel slightly uncalm?

nothing negative reported by seagate's tools not by crystal diskinfo.
also I quite don't think that the caddy is the issue in here because Windows has been hating on this specific HDD for a while.

 

[plast0000]

I'm quite not sure but I think installing intel rapid storage technology and disabling powerlink management did correct its behavior on Windows.

I'll test for some more time.

 

[popatim]

Did you install the laptops other drivers as well?

 

[plast0000]

Did you install the laptops other drivers as well?

uhhh yea all of them, Window update generally takes care of all of that + I check device manager to make sure everything is in place. but it doesn't offer rapid storage nor do I usually install because I believe it was made for RAID only. but I decided to use it anyways since it was offered on hp's driver download page for my model (15-ay071ne)
there was a HDD firmware update utility for seagate HDD as well. but interestingly, my HDD was not enlisted for an upgrade.

 

[popatim]

Windows update usually only installs the latest version of the drivers manufacturers pay MS to have otherwise you get ones MS wrote which usually work good enough.

 

[plast0000]

I've been testing for a few days and even played a small game on it. so I guess it's good for now.

-So in a nutshell I got it working by installing latest version of intel rapid storage technology, disabling link power management and performing a reboot. So if anyone is facing a problem with their trash tier 5400 thin HDD, specially caddies. you can try this as long as they are willing to lose some minutes from you battery.

one more final note that might not be relevant: my HDD is formatted as a single volume in ReFS filesystem. I formatted from NTFS to ReFS to see how it would behave before reaching the intel rapid storage tech solution.
since everything works nice now I guess I'll keep it as it is. If anyone plans to use ReFS they better be not planning to use their disks on non Win10 systems. you can't mount that on Win7 or 8. and Win8.1 only supports ReFS V1 (latest is v3.2 as of today. am not sure if 8.1 can mount modern ReFS). There's a linux driver from paragon but requires kernel 4.10 AT MOST (won't work on ubuntu 18.04 for example. use 14.04 instead)