Jump to content

GPT drive detected incorrectly as MBR in another machine

Carskick
Go to solution Solved by Carskick,

Problem solved!

 

Thanks to an Amazon review on my Sabrent SATA to USB 3.0 enclosure, I discovered that a firmware update of the USB enclosure fixes the problem

 

https://drivers.softpedia.com/get/FIRMWARE/Others/JMicron-JMS578-USB-30-SATA-Controller-Firmware-124010002.shtml

 

I was able to replicate the issue on a 3TB WD I had lying around. I then flashed the firmware, then even the enclosure gave the same GPT Protective error. I used diskpart to clean the drive, recreated, and boom, all is normal. I'm cloning my user files SSD to this hard drive now, which Macrium wouldn't do with the enclosures old firmware, and will try putting it in the server. If all is good, I'll do the same with the Toshiba drive, and proceed from there. 

 

So all this hassle and my previous reformat was caused by the stupid stock firmware on this controller... Unbelievable.

As I mentioned before, it worked fine with smaller drives. I recovered customer data off of it many times, etc. But I guess the issue had to do with how it handled 2TB+ drives or something.

 

Thanks everyone for helping me get through this nonsense!!!

I've come across this issue a couple of times, but have never found a fix. Hopefully someone knows a long term fix for this. ;)

 

I have a 5TB Toshiba X300 that is plugged into my computer (Win 10) through a USB 3.0 dock. It is formated as 1 large GPT partion and has data on it, and it all works fine.

 

When I take the drive out and plug it into another Windows 10 (via SATA or USB), the computer tries to detect the drive as MBR, and the partition appears as a 1.99GB GPT Protective Partition. I cannot convert it to GPT with Windows "Computer Management" or EaseUS Partition Master. If I put the drive back into my USB 3.0 adapter to my computer again, it's back to a 5TB GPT partition and is fully functional

 

As an aside, I had to format the drive when I went from internal SATA to the USB 3.0 drive on my PC, because I this issues.

 

Why is this drive's GPT format not being detected correctly when it's switched from one PC to another, or one interface to another? Is there a fix?

 

Thank you!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Link to post
Share on other sites

Sounds strange. Your sata-settings in bios are set to AHCI?

Do I understand it correctly that on the 2nd PC, it isn't recognized as gpt even if you connect it with the usb 3.0 adapter?

Does it appear as gpt when you put the drive via sata in the 1st pc?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Link to post
Share on other sites

8 minutes ago, Sir0Tek said:

Sounds strange. Your sata-settings in bios are set to AHCI?

Do I understand it correctly that on the 2nd PC, it isn't recognized as gpt even if you connect it with the usb 3.0 adapter?

Does it appear as gpt when you put the drive via sata in the 1st pc?

In it's current form, I'm using USB 3.0 on the first PC, and sata on the 2nd.

Just tried using USB 3.0 on the 2nd PC, and it detects it the same incorrect way.

 

SATA on the 2nd PC is set to AHCI, and I've tried it with Hot Swap setting on and off. (It's my new server I'm setting up, so it's got hot swap bays, though by-passing them directly to SATA didn't make a difference)

 

That being said, as I mentioned before, switching form SATA on my PC to USB 3.0 before I reformatted caused the same issue. The reformat wasn't a long term fix.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Link to post
Share on other sites

29 minutes ago, Carskick said:

I've come across this issue a couple of times, but have never found a fix. Hopefully someone knows a long term fix for this. ;)

 

I have a 5TB Toshiba X300 that is plugged into my computer (Win 10) through a USB 3.0 dock. It is formated as 1 large GPT partion and has data on it, and it all works fine.

 

When I take the drive out and plug it into another Windows 10 (via SATA or USB), the computer tries to detect the drive as MBR, and the partition appears as a 1.99GB GPT Protective Partition. I cannot convert it to GPT with Windows "Computer Management" or EaseUS Partition Master. If I put the drive back into my USB 3.0 adapter to my computer again, it's back to a 5TB GPT partition and is fully functional

 

As an aside, I had to format the drive when I went from internal SATA to the USB 3.0 drive on my PC, because I this issues.

 

Why is this drive's GPT format not being detected correctly when it's switched from one PC to another, or one interface to another? Is there a fix?

 

Thank you!

How it works under SATA and how it works under NVMe or USB are different.

 

SATA should be AHCI. NVMe should be RAID. USB simply bridges SATA.

 

However non-EFI systems do not see drives over 4TB. So that machine that is only seeing a 2TB partition, is likely not running in UEFI mode.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Link to post
Share on other sites

I suspect the OS is being funky...

Does the drive appear correctly in a different OS?,

You can try with a bootable Linux installer on a USB drive,there is an option in the installer to test the OS without installing it.

A PC Enthusiast since 2011
AMD Ryzen 7 5700X@4.65GHz | GIGABYTE GTX 1660 GAMING OC @ Core 2085MHz Memory 5000MHz
Cinebench R23: 15669cb | Unigine Superposition 1080p Extreme: 3566
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Link to post
Share on other sites

54 minutes ago, Kisai said:

How it works under SATA and how it works under NVMe or USB are different.

 

SATA should be AHCI. NVMe should be RAID. USB simply bridges SATA.

 

However non-EFI systems do not see drives over 4TB. So that machine that is only seeing a 2TB partition, is likely not running in UEFI mode.

The computer is definitely using UFEI.

 

But you have helped me get somewhere with this. :)

 

I am using a USB 3.0 docking station with the drive on my PC. Tried it on my wife's PC, which has the same exact docking station and motherboard, drive detects correctly!

 

When I put it into the 2nd PC, different motherboard, different USB 3.0 docking station, no go. So I brought my USB 3.0 adapter over to the 2nd PC, and it now detects it!

 

So it appears the issue is switching from direct SATA to a SATA/USB bridge, or to a SATA/USB bridge with a different chipset. Never had an issue doing this with MBR, is this a GPT specific issue? I originally planned on sometimes bringing this drive from my Server (2nd PCs) hot swap bay to my USB 3.0 as needed, but it appears this won't be possible over GPT. If I want it to work predominately with SATA connections, I'll have to reformat it while connected to SATA, then recopy over all the data, correct? Geez, why is GPT so picky this way? Any way around this?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Link to post
Share on other sites

I found this on Macrium's website. I'll bet this is the problem:

 

https://knowledgebase.macrium.com/display/KNOW72/Incompatible+Disk+Selected

External USB enclosures...


 
image2015-4-10%2018%3A35%3A3.png?version=1&modificationDate=1428691599000&api=v2

 

We have identified that a number of recent external USB enclosures will 'fake' 4096 Bytes per sector disks and cause the error above. This happens regardless of the actual sector size of the attached disk and even if the disk supports 512e.
 

Why do they do this? 

Normally disks with 512 Bytes per sector that are larger than 2TB would need to be initialized using the GUID Partition Table (GPT) format. Note that GPT disks are not supported by Windows XP,  however, MBR disks are supported by all Windows Operating Systems, including Windows XP.

If the reported sector size is changed to 4096 Bytes then MBR disks can be as large as 16 Terabytes and still be accessible by Windows.  So, by changing the reported disk sector size to 4096 Bytes for disks attached to the enclosure this enables all Windows PC's from XP onwards to be able to access disks greater then 2TB.  If you are selling USB enclosures then this gives you a larger potential market and is a 'no-brainer' product feature.

Isn't this good?

Well yes, if the only purpose for the USB enclosure is to provide additional storage and you do not intend to take out the disk. But this is bad if you intend to clone to a disk in the enclosure and then use the cloned disk to boot your PC. It simply won't work. If you remove the disk from the enclosure then it cannot be read. This is because the sector size will change and the partition structures on the disk will be unreadable.

So what do I do?

If you receive the 'Incompatible Disk Selected' error shown above and you are using an external USB enclosure, then either try a different enclosure which doesn't change the reported disk sector size or directly attach the disk to a spare SATA port on your PC's motherboard. This will ensure that the disk manufacturer's drive geometry is reported correctly and may allow you to proceed with your clone or restore operation providing that the reported sector size is now compatible.  

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Link to post
Share on other sites

Problem solved!

 

Thanks to an Amazon review on my Sabrent SATA to USB 3.0 enclosure, I discovered that a firmware update of the USB enclosure fixes the problem

 

https://drivers.softpedia.com/get/FIRMWARE/Others/JMicron-JMS578-USB-30-SATA-Controller-Firmware-124010002.shtml

 

I was able to replicate the issue on a 3TB WD I had lying around. I then flashed the firmware, then even the enclosure gave the same GPT Protective error. I used diskpart to clean the drive, recreated, and boom, all is normal. I'm cloning my user files SSD to this hard drive now, which Macrium wouldn't do with the enclosures old firmware, and will try putting it in the server. If all is good, I'll do the same with the Toshiba drive, and proceed from there. 

 

So all this hassle and my previous reformat was caused by the stupid stock firmware on this controller... Unbelievable.

As I mentioned before, it worked fine with smaller drives. I recovered customer data off of it many times, etc. But I guess the issue had to do with how it handled 2TB+ drives or something.

 

Thanks everyone for helping me get through this nonsense!!!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Link to post
Share on other sites

  • 1 year later...

I had the same issue here, but after updating the firmware of my sata dock, all the drives that I created with the old firmware are now unreadable... Is there anyone that has access to the old firmware for that Sabrent Dock (EC-DFLT), or any ways to convert back the recognized MBR partition back to GPT ? I'm on osx...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Link to post
Share on other sites

  • 1 year later...
On 5/5/2021 at 10:08 AM, Phil007 said:

I had the same issue here, but after updating the firmware of my sata dock, all the drives that I created with the old firmware are now unreadable... Is there anyone that has access to the old firmware for that Sabrent Dock (EC-DFLT), or any ways to convert back the recognized MBR partition back to GPT ? I'm on osx...

Irony of ironies, after all this time, I ran into the same issue, with the same Sabrent dock! I've placed a review on Amazon's page with a link to the firmware update in the hope that it can help others. 

... and in my own idiocy, I updated the Firmware and did the same thing! I'm ordering another enclosure to "fix" the bad drives by moving data off of them, and then once I've accomplished that, I'll update the firmware on enclosure number two, to be done with the issue forever. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Link to post
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now

×