Second disk not "enabled"

[Bob]

I have two relatively new 80GB WD HDs of the same model. I have the
latest 80-wire, blue-connector, cable-select IDE cables for both IDE
channels. Actually I have three of the same model disk, two with
identical model numbers and one with a slight difference in the last
two characters. What I describe happens no matter which of these disk
is used.

I have identical disks images because I cloned one to the other with
Acronis. Each disk boots and runs by itself. I can add a second drive
to the IDE slave channel 0, or the IDE master channel 1, without
problems as long as it is a different model (older) WD drive. I
cannot, however, add the second 80 GB WD drive using either cable
select or master-slave jumper selections.

What happens when I do add the second 80GB WD drive is as follows.

1) BIOS detect the two drives correctly - it gets their model number
correct (one has an A0 at the end of the model number and the other
has a C0, so I can tell them apart.)

2) Windows loads and runs but the second drive does not show up in My
Computer.

3) Device Manager states that both the drives and the adapter are
working properly. I can see UltraDMA is activated.

4) Disk Management has an entry for the second drive in the table at
the top, but there is no drive letter or disk label. Disk Manager
shows the drive in the graphic below as active, healthy, online, it
shows its size but does not show its label or its drive letter in
either the table at the top or the graphic at the bottom. When I click
on Properties, nothing happens.

6) When I attempt to assign a drive letter I get the following error:

+++
Logical Disk Manager
The operation did not complete because the partition/volume is not
enabled. Please reboot the computer to enable the partition/volume.
+++

When I first added the second drive, Windows made me reboot because it
found the new device. Now when I reboot a second time because of the
error above, Windows shuts down but won't restart - all I get is a
black screen after Windows has shut down. I have to cycle the power
and then restart it with the front button.

7) After this second reboot, nothing has changed. The drive is still
not "enabled". I uninstalled and reinstalled the driver for the second
drive, but that did not help.

I do not have any problems adding a second WD HD as long as it is not
one of the 80 GB models.

This is really weird - I have never encountered anything like this in
20 years of Windows. I have this ill feeling something has gone wrong
in the Registry and I will have to do an In-Place Upgrade to rebuild
Windows.

But first hopefully you all will point the way to fixing this.


--

Map of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy
http://home.houston.rr.com/rkba/vrwc.html

The ideological elites at the U.N. see the world as a collection of
helpless and victimized peoples beset by an ever-widening array of
"problems" ranging from civil wars to racial inequality that can be
solved only by an outside, all-knowing bureaucracy - the U.N. itself.
Their ultimate agenda is the disappearance of the sovereign nations
they claim to represent and the advent of a uniform global
government in which no one will be represented except the elites
themselves.

 

[John McGaw]

I have two relatively new 80GB WD HDs of the same model. I have the
latest 80-wire, blue-connector, cable-select IDE cables for both IDE
channels. Actually I have three of the same model disk, two with
identical model numbers and one with a slight difference in the last
two characters. What I describe happens no matter which of these disk
is used.

I have identical disks images because I cloned one to the other with
Acronis. Each disk boots and runs by itself. I can add a second drive
to the IDE slave channel 0, or the IDE master channel 1, without
problems as long as it is a different model (older) WD drive. I
cannot, however, add the second 80 GB WD drive using either cable
select or master-slave jumper selections.

What happens when I do add the second 80GB WD drive is as follows.

1) BIOS detect the two drives correctly - it gets their model number
correct (one has an A0 at the end of the model number and the other
has a C0, so I can tell them apart.)

2) Windows loads and runs but the second drive does not show up in My
Computer.

3) Device Manager states that both the drives and the adapter are
working properly. I can see UltraDMA is activated.

4) Disk Management has an entry for the second drive in the table at
the top, but there is no drive letter or disk label. Disk Manager
shows the drive in the graphic below as active, healthy, online, it
shows its size but does not show its label or its drive letter in
either the table at the top or the graphic at the bottom. When I click
on Properties, nothing happens.

6) When I attempt to assign a drive letter I get the following error:

+++
Logical Disk Manager
The operation did not complete because the partition/volume is not
enabled. Please reboot the computer to enable the partition/volume.
+++

When I first added the second drive, Windows made me reboot because it
found the new device. Now when I reboot a second time because of the
error above, Windows shuts down but won't restart - all I get is a
black screen after Windows has shut down. I have to cycle the power
and then restart it with the front button.

7) After this second reboot, nothing has changed. The drive is still
not "enabled". I uninstalled and reinstalled the driver for the second
drive, but that did not help.

I do not have any problems adding a second WD HD as long as it is not
one of the 80 GB models.

This is really weird - I have never encountered anything like this in
20 years of Windows. I have this ill feeling something has gone wrong
in the Registry and I will have to do an In-Place Upgrade to rebuild
Windows.

But first hopefully you all will point the way to fixing this.

Wild guess here but does the failure only happen when the "second" drive
is an exact clone of the first? What I'm wondering is if having the
identical master information on both drives, drive letters, labels, etc,
is confusing the OS. Would it be possible to change something on the
clone by hooking it up on on a different channel or a different computer
entirely and then giving it a different letter and label? Like I wrote,
this is really a WAG but somehow it seems to make sense...

 

[Bob]

Wild guess here but does the failure only happen when the "second" drive
is an exact clone of the first? What I'm wondering is if having the
identical master information on both drives, drive letters,

Drive letters are not part of the disk - they are assigned by the
operating system.

labels, etc, is confusing the OS.

It shouldn't. It doesn't confuse Acronis when I make the clone from
the CD. The problem is inside Windows.

Would it be possible to change something on the
clone by hooking it up on on a different channel or a different computer
entirely and then giving it a different letter and label?

The disks start out as clones but routine operations on the boot disk
makes it different, such as fetching mail, ngs, etc.



Like I wrote,

this is really a WAG but somehow it seems to make sense...

Unfortunately that is not the exact problem, but at some level Windows
is getting things screwed up.

As mentioned, I can clone the second disk using the CD version of
Acronis. It has absolutely no problem assigning a drive letter and
recognizing the second disk. Therefore the problem is Win2K.

Another thing - when I run the Win2K defrag with only the first disk
attached to the machine, there are 2 entries in the list - both are C:
but one is called "system" and the other is not names. It looks like I
have a phantom disk.

How would I uninstall all the drivers associated with the C: drive -
while Win2K was running? I suppose I could boot from another disk, say
the disk that is different and then clean out all the drivers
associated with the 80GB disks.




--

Map of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy
http://home.houston.rr.com/rkba/vrwc.html

The ideological elites at the U.N. see the world as a collection of
helpless and victimized peoples beset by an ever-widening array of
"problems" ranging from civil wars to racial inequality that can be
solved only by an outside, all-knowing bureaucracy - the U.N. itself.
Their ultimate agenda is the disappearance of the sovereign nations
they claim to represent and the advent of a uniform global
government in which no one will be represented except the elites
themselves.

 

[Bob]

Wild guess here but does the failure only happen when the "second" drive
is an exact clone of the first? What I'm wondering is if having the
identical master information on both drives, drive letters, labels, etc,
is confusing the OS. Would it be possible to change something on the
clone by hooking it up on on a different channel or a different computer
entirely and then giving it a different letter and label? Like I wrote,
this is really a WAG but somehow it seems to make sense...

You are closer to the problem than I imagined. Here is an error I
found in Event Viewer that occurred when I tried to add the second
drive:

+++
The volume ID for D: has been reset, since it was a duplicate of that
on C:. This volume ID is used by Distributed Link Tracking to
automatically repair file links, such as Shell Shortcuts and OLE
links, when for some reason those links become broken.
+++

The "volume ID" is the same as the "drive letter". Although the
operating system does assign drive letters and therefore they are not
embedded on the disk, the volume ID is embedded on the disk and that
is what is used to create a drive letter. So your suspicion is correct
in essence.

I should mention that these disks are the ones I used in that Enermax
ES-352 Dynabacker unit. I finally got rid of it when I learned that it
may be recalled from distributors. No wonder Enermax did not want to
support it.

There is something intrinsically wrong with attempting to create a
backup from RAID 1 - namely the pagefile sometimes gets corrupted.
RAID works on the basis that the switch to the mirror is done online,
where the current content of the pagefile is still in memory. If you
attempt to stop the mirror after it has been completed for backup, it
can have a defective pagefile depending on the last time it was
flushed to disk.

Apparently something has caused my disks to have the same volume ID.
That means I will have to reformat them. However I can't do that
inside Windows because the disk is not recognized - a classic
catch-22. So I will have to format the disks some other way - likely
with the installation disk. Then I know I have a street legal format.

Does anyone know how I can find out what the Volume ID is?

Does anyone know if Acronis duplicates the Volume ID when it clones a
disk? I made a clone on a different model drive, and it mounted
successfully. So apparently Acronis does not duplicate the Volume ID.




--

Map of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy
http://home.houston.rr.com/rkba/vrwc.html

The ideological elites at the U.N. see the world as a collection of
helpless and victimized peoples beset by an ever-widening array of
"problems" ranging from civil wars to racial inequality that can be
solved only by an outside, all-knowing bureaucracy - the U.N. itself.
Their ultimate agenda is the disappearance of the sovereign nations
they claim to represent and the advent of a uniform global
government in which no one will be represented except the elites
themselves.

 

[Bob]

Wild guess here but does the failure only happen when the "second" drive
is an exact clone of the first?

Indeed the Volume IDs are cloned by Acronis True Image.

However that is not the total problem. Somehow, by uninstalling a
bunch of 80GB HD drivers (Add/Remove Hardware), I was able to get
Win2K to recognize the second 80GB HD fully. It works now.

I tried to change the Volume ID but it did no good. There was
something else going on. However, I must mention that after all the
fooling around I have done, the two 80GB HDs that now work together
are different generations of clones. I will have to clone the first HD
to the second so that they are identical and see then if the second
one mounts successfully.

There is some kind of serious driver contention problem here. I recall
people discussing it several months ago, and someone saying that it is
a known problem - but I do not recall if there is any solution.

In any event, either the volumes are now sufficiently different that
the second one did not conflict with the first or all that
uninstalling points to too many old drivers causing a contention
somehow.


--

Map of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy
http://home.houston.rr.com/rkba/vrwc.html

The ideological elites at the U.N. see the world as a collection of
helpless and victimized peoples beset by an ever-widening array of
"problems" ranging from civil wars to racial inequality that can be
solved only by an outside, all-knowing bureaucracy - the U.N. itself.
Their ultimate agenda is the disappearance of the sovereign nations
they claim to represent and the advent of a uniform global
government in which no one will be represented except the elites
themselves.

 

[Bob]

Indeed the Volume IDs are cloned by Acronis True Image.

However that is not the total problem. Somehow, by uninstalling a
bunch of 80GB HD drivers (Add/Remove Hardware), I was able to get
Win2K to recognize the second 80GB HD fully. It works now.

The next thing I did was to clone the first drive to the second drive,
so that they are now identical.

Windows crashed. It blue-screened - Inaccessible Boot Device.

When I removed the second disk, the first disk booted successfully.

There is something about an identical clone on the same model HD that
is causing a problem.

 

[Timothy Daniels]

This is a real puzzler. I suggest a posting in:
comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage

Also, check the entry in
Device Management/expand Disk Drives/
rt-clk the HD of interest/clk Properties.
On the General tab, at the bottom window,
is the menu selection "Use this device (enable)"?

*TimDaniels*

 

[Mike Walsh]

Maybe the windows signature, which must be unique for each drive.

 

[Bob]

This is a real puzzler.

But it is reminiscent of your comments about problems with cloned
disks.

I suggest a posting in:
comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage

Too many trolls.

Also, check the entry in
Device Management/expand Disk Drives/
rt-clk the HD of interest/clk Properties.
On the General tab, at the bottom window,
is the menu selection "Use this device (enable)"?

I did that and just about everything else, like looking in the ATAPI
entries. Everything was enabled at that level.

If I follow your suggestion and run the newly-cloned disk immediately,
then it will allow me to mount the second disk satisfactorily after I
shut it down and reboot with the original disk in the system (I too
have a bunch of Kingwin removable drive bays - all my HDs are in
trays.)

After I do this, I can then swap the drives and boot from the original
drive and mount the second one - the clone - successfully.

There is something about "Distributed Link Tracking" mentioned in an
Event Viewer message but I have found that the Volume ID can be the
same for all the disks. Maybe by running the cloned disk immediately
something changes on the disk that removes the conflict.

 

[Bob]

Please elaborate or point me to references.

Maybe the windows signature, which must be unique for each drive.

 

[Grinder]

Please elaborate or point me to references.

Maybe the windows signature, which must be unique for each drive.

The disk signature, ... identifies the disk to the operating system.
Windows 2000 uses the disk signature as an index to store and retrieve
information about the disk in the registry ...

http://www.microsoft.com/resources/.../professional/reskit/en-us/part7/proch32.mspx

 

[Mike Walsh]

The signature is usually written to the drive the first time a drive is detected by windows, and you will see a prompt. If you don't get the prompt with a cloned drive it is probably using the existing signature, which will be the same a the signature of the drive it was cloned from.

 

[Bob]

The disk signature, ... identifies the disk to the operating system.
Windows 2000 uses the disk signature as an index to store and retrieve
information about the disk in the registry ...

http://www.microsoft.com/resources/.../professional/reskit/en-us/part7/proch32.mspx

That must be it. But why does the problem go away when I boot
immediately from the clone alone and then add the second disk after
shutdown. Also why is there no problem when I use two different model
disks?

Won't Work
----------------
1) Create clone on second disk of same model.
2) Add second disk to system
3) Boot from first disk.
4) BSOD - Inaccessible Boot Device

Will Work
------------
1) Create clone on second disk of same model.
2) Make second disk the boot disk immediately by itself.
3) Shut down and boot from first disk with second disk in the system.
4) Windows starts and second disk mounts properly.

Will Always Work

 

[Bob]

The signature is usually written to the drive the first time a drive is detected by windows, and you will see a prompt. If you don't get the prompt with a cloned drive it is probably using the existing signature, which will be the same a the signature of the drive it was cloned from.

What kind of prompt? Of course you don't have much of an opportunity
to get a prompt if the damn thing BSODs on you.

Would getting the same signarture cause the problems I am
experiencing, like the BSOD?

Does booting from the second disk - the clone - cause the signature to
change? Something changes because if you boot from the second disk
alone immediately after cloning, then you will not get a BSOD when you
shut down and boot from either the first or second disk with the other
disk added to the system.

IOW, booting from the clone immediately changes whatever is causing
the problem.

 

[Bob]

What kind of prompt? Of course you don't have much of an opportunity
to get a prompt if the damn thing BSODs on you.

Would getting the same signarture cause the problems I am
experiencing, like the BSOD?

Does booting from the second disk - the clone - cause the signature to
change? Something changes because if you boot from the second disk
alone immediately after cloning, then you will not get a BSOD when you
shut down and boot from either the first or second disk with the other
disk added to the system.

IOW, booting from the clone immediately changes whatever is causing
the problem.

There is a further complication I ran into after I posted. I got the
clone to mount properly but somewhere along the line as I was using
DVD Shrink, the disk volume disappeared and the situation reverted to
the one I had originally described, namely the failure to assign a
drive letter.

This is getting too weird for words. MS has done something to prevent
cloning and it is interferring with normal operation. I will
undoubtedly waste all of tomorrow chasing it down and will report what
I find as I find it for those who might be interested.

The Registry has a ton of old "mounted disks" in HKLM/System/Current
Control Set/MountedDevices. It's time to clean those out but not until
I make a clone for backup in case Win2K brainfarts and won't run.

 

[Bob]

The signature is usually written to the drive the first time a drive is detected by windows, and you will see a prompt. If you don't get the prompt with a cloned drive it is probably using the existing signature, which will be the same a the signature of the drive it was cloned from.

I mentioned earlier that I could get Windows to mount the clone if I
first used it as the boot disk alone. That's not quite true. I forgot
to mention that for that to work, you have to clone the drive from a
drive that is a different model. Here's how I did that.

I have a 30 GB WD drive which I make a clone of the 80 GB original. I
can get by with that because the 80 GB drive holds only 15 GB of
system and data. So I clone 80 GB -> 30 GB.

Then to create the second drive - the 80 GB clone - I clone it from
the 30 GB drive. IOW, the 30 GB drive is acting as an intermediary to
fool Window into thinking that the 80 GB clone is not made from the
original 80 GB drive.

I have to run the clone second drive alone to get Windows to do
exactly what you describe above - to assign a new signature. Now I can
put the original drive as boot disk and use the second clone drive as
D:.

Here's something else I ran into. When the second drive is not fully
mounted - no drive letter assigned but otherwise attached to Windows,
any disk write to C: will also be written to the second disk, which
slows things down considerably.

I wish there was a utility I could use to fool Windows by creating a
new signature after I create the clone. Changing the Volume ID doesn't
seem to work.

Ain't Winders jest wunnerful. What a scream.

 

[Mike Walsh]

I get a prompt asking if I want to write a signature to the disk when running disk administrator, since that is the first thing that I do after installing a new drive. It happens when installing a drive to be partitioned or formatted, or when I install a drive from another system e.g. Win98 that does not have a signature and I run disk administrator to assign drive letters.
I have never run two disks with the same signature, but I assume it would cause some strange and inconsistent results, including blue screen of death.

 

[Bob]

I get a prompt asking if I want to write a signature to the disk when running disk administrator,

What exactly do you mean by "disk administrator"? Is it the same as
"Disk Management" in "Computer Management" located either in Control
Panel or My Computer ("Manage").

I get a prompt sometimes but not necessarily in Disk Management and it
says nothing about any "signature". It says that Windows has installed
a new device and you have to reboot.

since that is the first thing that I do after installing a new drive.

How do you make this "disk administrator" force a new signature?

It happens when installing a drive to be partitioned or formatted, or when I install a drive from another system e.g. Win98 that does not have a signature and I run disk administrator to assign drive letters.

If you mean "Disk Management" in "Computer Management" then when I try
to assign a drive letter to a clone drive I get an error message
telling me that the volume/partition is not enabled and to reboot to
enable it. When I reboot I get the same thing over again.

I have never run two disks with the same signature,

OK, then what do I do to change the signature on the clone before I
run Windows. Is there a CD utility available that allows me to change
the signature outside Windows proper. That's really what I need.

but I assume it would cause some strange and inconsistent results, including blue screen of death.

I am here to tell you that it most definitely causes strange and
inconsistent results, including BSOD.

The only way I have found to get around this is to clone the second
drive from a source drive that is a different model. What I have to do
is first clone an intermediate 30 GB drive from my original 80 GB
drive and then clone my second 80 GB drive from the 30 GB
intermediate.

 

[Timothy Daniels]

But it is reminiscent of your comments about problems with cloned
disks.

[.........]
If I follow your suggestion and run the newly-cloned disk immediately,
then it will allow me to mount the second disk satisfactorily after I
shut it down and reboot with the original disk in the system (I too
have a bunch of Kingwin removable drive bays - all my HDs are in
trays.)

After I do this, I can then swap the drives and boot from the original
drive and mount the second one - the clone - successfully.

There is something about "Distributed Link Tracking" mentioned in an
Event Viewer message but I have found that the Volume ID can be the
same for all the disks. Maybe by running the cloned disk immediately
something changes on the disk that removes the conflict.

Your experiences are interesting. I assume that you mean
that you ran the new clone in isolation from its "parent" HD
when you say that you ran the new clone "immediately".
IOW, if you clone the 1st 80GB HD to the 2nd 80GB HD
and then boot up the new clone for the 1st time with the
1st 80GB HD (the "parent" HD) removed, the clone in
the 2nd HD boots up OK? If this is true, you've shown that
the "Clones First Boot In Isolation" rule for WinXP cloning
derives from some characteristic of the Win2K/WinXP
family. Be careful, though, in assuming that it doesn't
apply to non-identical HDs, as I have had the mysterious
clone-parent binding occur when WinXP was cloned
between different sizes of the otherwise same-modelled
HDs. In those cases, careful inspection for the presence
of each file listed in My Documents showed that random
entries in the My Documents folder were actually short
cuts to nothing. It was as if the clone decided that the
"parent's" copy was good enough and it decided not to
use its own copy but rather to point to the "parent's" copy.
And when the HDs were booted separately, the "parent"
had all the files, but the clone sometimes had just a pointer
to what had been in the "parent".

*TimDaniels*

 

[Bob]

Your experiences are interesting.

Actually I am getting weary chasing this one down.

Fortunately I now have resolution - see below.

I assume that you mean
that you ran the new clone in isolation from its "parent" HD
when you say that you ran the new clone "immediately".
IOW, if you clone the 1st 80GB HD to the 2nd 80GB HD
and then boot up the new clone for the 1st time with the
1st 80GB HD (the "parent" HD) removed, the clone in
the 2nd HD boots up OK? If this is true, you've shown that
the "Clones First Boot In Isolation" rule for WinXP cloning
derives from some characteristic of the Win2K/WinXP
family. Be careful, though, in assuming that it doesn't
apply to non-identical HDs, as I have had the mysterious
clone-parent binding occur when WinXP was cloned
between different sizes of the otherwise same-modelled
HDs. In those cases, careful inspection for the presence
of each file listed in My Documents showed that random
entries in the My Documents folder were actually short
cuts to nothing. It was as if the clone decided that the
"parent's" copy was good enough and it decided not to
use its own copy but rather to point to the "parent's" copy.
And when the HDs were booted separately, the "parent"
had all the files, but the clone sometimes had just a pointer
to what had been in the "parent".

As mentioned earlier in another post, I left out a crucial step which
at the time I did not think was important. The clone was made from an
intermediary disk that is different. In this case the intermediary
disk is a 30 GB WD disk.

I cloned the 30 GB intermediary from the original 80 GB disk and then
cloned the second 80 GB from the 30 GB disk. Then I booted the 80 GB
clone alone and got a new signature. That's why this scheme worked.

Here is an explanation of what is going on:

+++
As you have found out, Windows NT, 2K and XP will throw a wobbly if it
finds two drives with the same DiskID, which is usually the case when
you make a drive to drive clone.

Have a read of this Dan Goodell article on general rules for
successful cloning of NT-family OS's

http://www.goodells.net/multiboot/partsigs.htm

Zero out the offending 4 bytes via Method #3 ("Kawecki's Trick").
+++