SATA HDD USB refuses to work after virus scan

[emekadavid]

I use a SATA combo HDD usb drive as external drive for saving my files. after a thorough virus scan, the first time ever, i was asked to delete an infected file. after shutting down and booting my system hours later, i discovered the system refuses to recognise the HDD usb. it keeps reinstalling itself. what could possibly be the problem? tia

 

[emekadavid]

I use a SATA combo HDD usb drive as external drive for saving my files. after a thorough virus scan, the first time ever, i was asked to delete an infected file. after shutting down and booting my system hours later, i discovered the system refuses to recognise the HDD usb. it keeps reinstalling itself. what could possibly be the problem? tia

i do need help fast. all my files are in it. i have no replacement either.

 

[Paul]

i do need help fast. all my files are in it. i have no replacement either.

There is a small possibility the controller chip inside is made
by "Cypress" and the configuration information got erased.
(Google "cypress at2lp rc42" for more info.)

That happened to my external USB hard drive, and it no longer
showed up as a USB mass storage device, after I used Seagate Seatools
for Windows on it.

You will need to at least open the enclosure and verify it is Cypress.
If it isn't Cypress, then the explanation likely would not be correct.

There is a procedure and a tool available, to fix it. It basically
means reloading the configuration information.

You could also verify this, with UVCView, look at the configuration
the device presents, and notice it no longer claims to be a
storage device. USB has standard "Classes" and there is a class code
for USB mass storage.

You can pull the hard drive from the enclosure, and connect it to
a SATA equipped computer, to get to the files. The files are not
lost. Just the enclosure chip is affected. That's the theory.

If the virus scan overwrite the MBR on the hard drive, the enclosure
would still show up in Device Manager properly, but Disk Management would
show no valid partitions on it. So that's another thing you can verify,
that this isn't a problem with the MBR. If the enclosure just won't show
up at all, it's more likely to be a Cypress problem.

Your hard drive could also have taken an inopportune time to fail, which
would be another explanation. But then, that wouldn't align quite as well
as a theory, versus the configuration data getting overwritten.

There are many possibilities, which is why it's important to note the
exact symptoms, whether anything shows up in Device Manager, whether
UVCView sees anything, or if Device Manager is properly populated,
whether Disk Management shows evidence the partition table is gone.

*******

And if you really "need help fast", remove the hard drive and connect
the hard drive to a SATA computer. That will tell you your files are safe.
The files should be immediately visible.

Paul

 

[Flasherly]

On Mon, 8 Jul 2013 01:27:09 -0700 (PDT), emekadavid

i do need help fast. all my files are in it. i have no replacement
either.
-

There's a little utility I was looking at on a site dedicated to
standalone, soometimes called portable, programs installs, one of
which makes a USB flash drive bootable. Never personally ran it,
although my virus scan is surely a standalone, and I'm sure at least a
million would, but generally I keep handy my boot from my DVDs I've
replaced in triplicate for the very same reason, that there's
undeniably nothing better than fast boot to get to all my files.

 

[emekadavid]

WHAT virus scan gave you this problem?

I have avast!, the free edition, and IObit malware remover. I do both scansconsecutively, but only on the c: but yesterday decided just to try it on the external hdd usb drive and now this! At least, from flasherly's explanation, I'll have to think of opening the enclosure because the system recognises the hdd as usb mass storage device on port 2, both with device managerand uvcview.
thanks

 

[Flasherly]

On Mon, 8 Jul 2013 05:53:38 -0700 (PDT), emekadavid

I have avast!, the free edition,

and IObit malware remover. I do both scans consecutively, but only on
the c: but yesterday decided just to try it on the external hdd usb
drive and now this! At least, from flasherly's explanation, I'll have
to think of opening the enclosure because the system recognises the
hdd as usb mass storage device on port 2, both with device manager and
uvcview.

thanks

-
System support for storage devices is a matter of connection cables
and nothing more. There's no "opening" involved other than what is
required to connect those cables. Beyond which, it's -ALL- software
manipulatives, including laying down resources for a valid system boot
sequence.

Virus scans, although a valid point at times, (as I mentioned I do
occasional use mine - a, the only, SourceForge freeware virus scanner
I'm at least aware of --ie. ClamWin), is as well a huge, huge industry
of profiteering blood-suckers, who promote and feed off the mass fears
of marginal and incompetent PC operators, most and by in large,
incapable of protecting themselves, much less assembling either PC
hardware or a supportive software infrastructure.

Hence - do witness the rise of a sustained resource from paid
subscription-based cloud services, wholly-contained although promoted
for and alonside a faltering PC platform, on but a carrier for
handheld devices to serve, for a "dumbed-down" generation of people
since to have realized, progressing from their holy talisman against
PC technology --pronounced as obfusification-- to smart telelphones to
supply such liimtations as constitute their want.

 

[emekadavid]

Thanks flasherly, but if i do not solve this problem, i have no heck how to get the data back and you know how much inconvenience it would cost me? that is why i appreciate contributions on this forum and contributors.
I followed through with your instructions.
Device manager registers it and uvcview also as a usb storage device.
disk management recognises the external hdd as disk 1, removable (G.
the product is a fujitsu, model no: mht2060ah pl; id:yttn. it has a 2005-6 year dating on it but i can assure you it's not a hardware malfunction.
so, any suggestions how to go about making the laptop see the partitions rather than just recognise it's existence?
thanks

 

[Paul]

Thanks flasherly, but if i do not solve this problem, i have no heck how to get the data back and you know how much inconvenience it would cost me? that is why i appreciate contributions on this forum and contributors.
I followed through with your instructions.
Device manager registers it and uvcview also as a usb storage device.
disk management recognises the external hdd as disk 1, removable (G.
the product is a fujitsu, model no: mht2060ah pl; id:yttn. it has a 2005-6 year dating on it but i can assure you it's not a hardware malfunction.
so, any suggestions how to go about making the laptop see the partitions rather than just recognise it's existence?
thanks

If the drive is present in Disk Management, you can try TestDisk
for Windows.

Do *not* immediately jump on the results. When TestDisk computes
a replacement MBR (master boot record and primary partition table),
sometimes it picks up an old partition which is invalid. You have
to be very careful, before accepting the information it has gathered.
But that tool can show you, your files are safe. There is a
preview capability, where it can list the files at the top level.

http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk_Step_By_Step

Here, TestDisk shows the files on a partition.

http://www.cgsecurity.org/mw/images/List_files.gif

If it was my drive, I would make a sector-by-sector copy
of it, before applying any repair-in-place tools like TestDisk.
But that's just me. Safety first.

Paul

 

[Flasherly]

On Mon, 8 Jul 2013 06:42:12 -0700 (PDT), emekadavid

How much money is $19 on ebay for the going cost of inconvenience.
http://www.ebay.com/ctg/Fujitsu-60-GB-Internal-5400-RPM-2-5-MHT2060AH-Hard-Drive-/69754105

OK. But, but... It's a glass platter and it's a fluid drive.
http://reviews.cnet.com/internal-hard-drives/fujitsu-mobile-mht2060ah-hard/4507-9998_7-30636429.html

That's worth something: forsure, it's shown on ebay not for an
external drive, (evidently, you've got one of those a manufacturer has
stuck into a plastic enclosure for calling it an external drive), and
you're also on a laptop, along with a flashstick plugged into the USB
port.

No different than any other computer, except for laptops that can be
somewhat more delicate and with less latitude for forgiving.

Let's try and make it simple. Real simple.
http://www.softpedia.com/get/System...ASEUS-Data-Recovery-Wizard-Free-Edition.shtml

That's the data, hopefully, along with some place other than the
Fujitsu, temporarily to store My Data, until My Data is placed again
where My Data likes to reside.

The other stuff, what Winderz 'keeps doing to [attempt unsucessfully
what to] reinstall,' I've no idea, the foggiest clue, except Winderz
is not the system, a system itegral, but Winderz is on a system, the
laptop itself, which systematically and properly will run all kinds of
stuff besides Winderz.

Yes, Winderz does and would have a system, of sorts and in a sense,
within a broader latitude generally given hardware, as might you
suspect, although there's, conceptually, both a Winderz idea and your
idea of how that ought be accomplished. It's cognitively something
called kludge by people capable of approaching at times different
means than an end to Microsoft's Knowledge Base;- Personally I all but
deplore a drive formatted to NTFS, and use pretty much use Easeus
Partition Manager for building FAT32 storage repositories excluvise to
broader sense of available resources that may favor developers of
3rd-party drive and file utilities. ...Opening up to play what angles
may have to offer.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I have avast!, the free edition, and IObit malware remover. I do both scans consecutively, but only on the c: but yesterday decided just to try it on the external hdd usb drive and now this! At least, from flasherly's explanation, I'll have to think of opening the enclosure because the system recognises the hdd as usb mass storage device on port 2, both with device manager and uvcview.
thanks

Note that that means it's not the Cypress problem but the partition
table is gone.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

If it was my drive, I would make a sector-by-sector copy
of it, before applying any repair-in-place tools like TestDisk.
But that's just me. Safety first.

I simply wouldn't use any repair-in-place tools unless I could
actually preview what they're going to do first. Work on copies if
it's important!

(And note that I've been messing with this sort of stuff off and on
for ages. I've done many an undelete when that meant a raw sector
editor on the TRS-80 and the Apple IIe. I worked with a notepad next
to me to write down the original values of anything I was changing.)

 

[Loren Pechtel]

the product is a fujitsu, model no: mht2060ah pl; id:yttn. it has a 2005-6 year dating on it but i can assure you it's not a hardware malfunction.

You like living dangerously! One copy of important data on an 8 year
old drive?

I wouldn't have one copy, period. I've sent too many drives back
under warranty.

 

[John Doe]

I use a SATA combo HDD usb drive as external drive for saving my
files. after a thorough virus scan, the first time ever, i was
asked to delete an infected file. after shutting down and
booting my system hours later, i discovered the system refuses
to recognise the HDD usb. it keeps reinstalling itself. what
could possibly be the problem? tia

You should have had a copy of any important files.

Make a copy(s) before even thinking about doing any repair work.

After trouble strikes, it might be too late, but you make a copy
before doing anything else. If you can't make a copy, you are sunk.

The worse the trouble, the more copies you should have.

 

[emekadavid]

I simply wouldn't use any repair-in-place tools unless I could

actually preview what they're going to do first. Work on copies if

it's important!



(And note that I've been messing with this sort of stuff off and on

for ages. I've done many an undelete when that meant a raw sector

editor on the TRS-80 and the Apple IIe. I worked with a notepad next

to me to write down the original values of anything I was changing.)

thanks. tried testdisk just to see and got blue screen of death.

 

[emekadavid]

You like living dangerously! One copy of important data on an 8 year

old drive?



I wouldn't have one copy, period. I've sent too many drives back

under warranty.

thanks. won't do it again

 

[emekadavid]

On Mon, 8 Jul 2013 06:42:12 -0700 (PDT), emekadavid




How much money is $19 on ebay for the going cost of inconvenience.

http://www.ebay.com/ctg/Fujitsu-60-GB-Internal-5400-RPM-2-5-MHT2060AH-Hard-Drive-/69754105



OK. But, but... It's a glass platter and it's a fluid drive.

http://reviews.cnet.com/internal-hard-drives/fujitsu-mobile-mht2060ah-hard/4507-9998_7-30636429.html



That's worth something: forsure, it's shown on ebay not for an

external drive, (evidently, you've got one of those a manufacturer has

stuck into a plastic enclosure for calling it an external drive), and

you're also on a laptop, along with a flashstick plugged into the USB

port.



No different than any other computer, except for laptops that can be

somewhat more delicate and with less latitude for forgiving.



Let's try and make it simple. Real simple.

http://www.softpedia.com/get/System...ASEUS-Data-Recovery-Wizard-Free-Edition.shtml



That's the data, hopefully, along with some place other than the

Fujitsu, temporarily to store My Data, until My Data is placed again

where My Data likes to reside.



The other stuff, what Winderz 'keeps doing to [attempt unsucessfully

what to] reinstall,' I've no idea, the foggiest clue, except Winderz

is not the system, a system itegral, but Winderz is on a system, the

laptop itself, which systematically and properly will run all kinds of

stuff besides Winderz.



Yes, Winderz does and would have a system, of sorts and in a sense,

within a broader latitude generally given hardware, as might you

suspect, although there's, conceptually, both a Winderz idea and your

idea of how that ought be accomplished. It's cognitively something

called kludge by people capable of approaching at times different

means than an end to Microsoft's Knowledge Base;- Personally I all but

deplore a drive formatted to NTFS, and use pretty much use Easeus

Partition Manager for building FAT32 storage repositories excluvise to

broader sense of available resources that may favor developers of

3rd-party drive and file utilities. ...Opening up to play what angles

may have to offer.

think of installing a partition manager, load fedora on a partition and then check the disk. easeus recognises disk but can't recreate partition. means possibly data is lying low in disk. thanks. winderz is all we have where i live; if u want to survive

 

[Flasherly]

On Mon, 8 Jul 2013 20:55:59 -0700 (PDT), emekadavid

think of installing a partition manager,

load fedora on a partition and then check the disk. easeus recognises
disk but can't recreate partition. means possibly data is lying low in
disk. thanks. winderz is all we have where i live; if u want to
survive

-
There are two easeus - 1) is a messed-up *Partition Restorer* and 2)
a deleted file recoverer. I suppose you tried the first (even though
I only mentioned the second). Easeus has gotten my butt out of some
soulfelt heartaches a couple times.

** http://www.easeus.com/partition-recovery/

Sounds pretty serious if neither is of any help. Of course with
partition/file losses, when they happened, I didn't wait, screw
around, but went straight into the recovery routines. I've also used
both, btw, and spent more hours than you want to know with the file
recovery routine before happening on or figuring just to get the
partition back with this new link provided above, if that's at all
possible at this point in your case.

Running XP here. No idea where I'd be if I hadn't taken backups
seriously since way back when. (Even though it's a different game now,
an expensive one when talking stacks of massive HD storage, assuming
duplicating them. The other angle is worse: culling them for most
important data, which means a lot of decision work on a compromised
solution at best. That I'm certainly not *totally* covered would be
the worst/best way to put it;- you choose.)

 

[emekadavid]

On Mon, 8 Jul 2013 20:55:59 -0700 (PDT), emekadavid




load fedora on a partition and then check the disk. easeus recognises

disk but can't recreate partition. means possibly data is lying low in

disk. thanks. winderz is all we have where i live; if u want to

survive



-

There are two easeus - 1) is a messed-up *Partition Restorer* and 2)

a deleted file recoverer. I suppose you tried the first (even though

I only mentioned the second). Easeus has gotten my butt out of some

soulfelt heartaches a couple times.



** http://www.easeus.com/partition-recovery/



Sounds pretty serious if neither is of any help. Of course with

partition/file losses, when they happened, I didn't wait, screw

around, but went straight into the recovery routines. I've also used

both, btw, and spent more hours than you want to know with the file

recovery routine before happening on or figuring just to get the

partition back with this new link provided above, if that's at all

possible at this point in your case.



Running XP here. No idea where I'd be if I hadn't taken backups

seriously since way back when. (Even though it's a different game now,

an expensive one when talking stacks of massive HD storage, assuming

duplicating them. The other angle is worse: culling them for most

important data, which means a lot of decision work on a compromised

solution at best. That I'm certainly not *totally* covered would be

the worst/best way to put it;- you choose.)

Thanks, I have graphics of the easeus partition recovery process.
first image: Data recovery > partition recovery > search all lost files: the system recognises the disk as Initio INIC-1511 USB Device
http://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/72417354/general/first.PNG
second image: on next, it reports 0.0kb 0 files in disk. Lost disk? any suggestions? do you think the virus scan file deletion is the problem or was the disk compromised?
http://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/72417354/general/second.PNG
third image: Partition Recovery. On choose a disk to recover, the Initio INIC-1511 USB Device was not listed. ???
http://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/72417354/general/third.PNG

 

[Paul]

Thanks, I have graphics of the easeus partition recovery process.
first image: Data recovery > partition recovery > search all lost files: the system recognises the disk as Initio INIC-1511 USB Device
http://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/72417354/general/first.PNG
second image: on next, it reports 0.0kb 0 files in disk. Lost disk? any suggestions? do you think the virus scan file deletion is the problem or was the disk compromised?
http://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/72417354/general/second.PNG
third image: Partition Recovery. On choose a disk to recover, the Initio INIC-1511 USB Device was not listed. ???
http://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/72417354/general/third.PNG

So this is your hard drive.

"Hitachi GST Travelstar 5K500.B HTS545025B9A300 (0A57912)
250GB 5400 RPM 8MB Cache 2.5" SATA 3.0Gb/s Notebook Hard Drive"

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822145255

I would pull the drive from the enclosure, and test while
connected to a SATA port on the computer.

Someone here, reports an INIC-1511 failing, and not
allowing the disk to be read. And connecting the
drive to the computer directly, worked for that drive.

http://forum.eeeuser.com/index.php?...ve-not-used-for-a-while-and-now-not-mounting/

To me, the INIC-1511 appears to be an IDE chip,
so there might be an IDE to SATA chip external
to the INIC-1511, to allow connection to SATA drives.

http://imageshack.us/a/img89/1436/ga7.gif

Your Easeus software mentions it doesn't support Dynamic Disk,
which is another reason the recovery effort may have failed.

I'm still trying to figure out, what the blue screen caused
by TestDisk means... Very puzzling. I'm not aware of any other
reports of TestDisk failing.

Paul

 

[Flasherly]

On Tue, 9 Jul 2013 03:16:31 -0700 (PDT), emekadavid

--
Paul's already mentioned Easeus won't handle a dynamic disk. It's
this sort of stuff that keeps me out of Windows' provisions - (if I
can't boot a DOS DVD bootable disc and see/access a partition, then
I'm out'a here) - dynamic, NTFS, and whatever else Microsoft has up
its sleeve or at the bottom of the deck (they're proprietary methods
in many instances, technology Microsoft owns and well may not allow
others, 3rd-party interests such as Easeus, to work within). Just Say
No to Microsoft: stick with FAT32. Microsoft I'm sure has its methods
for handling such contingencies, approved operational characteristics
also for avoiding them, but if I want the least common denominator,
it's all just another layer of empire-building and "skirt-hem
holding," some much dependency crap, to me, I can damn straight live
without. (And, btw, Easeus Partition Master has filed that void since
yesteryear's various drive managers - I may not competely trust
Easeus for everything I do to HDs, but for the most I have no reason
to complain.)