External hard drives of same brand acting oddly

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Hey y'all, I'm having an issue with 2 Western Digital external hard drives, and I'm not sure if its Windows acting up or something wrong with the hard drives themselves. Basically what's going on is that these 2 hard drives are being treated weirdly by Windows, almost acting like they don't "exist" as external hard drives, even though I can see and access them through "This PC". As far as I can tell there isn't any data loss happening in either hard drive nor is there any reasonable slow down, and one external hard drive I bought more recently than the other one.

With those 2 hard drives the oddities I'm seeing are:
  • I can't move items from the external hard drives to the Recycle Bin anymore - when trying it asks if i want to permanently erase the files from the hard drive.
  • Right-clicking on the hard drives and going to "Tools -> Error checking" and pressing "Check" causes nothing to happen, but using "chkdsk" through the command prompt works fine.
  • The drives aren't listed in Defragment.
  • The drives aren't being search indexed anymore, even though "Enhanced" is selected in "Windows Settings -> Search -> Searching Windows".
  • Disk Management sees the drives, but they aren't in the list view and only in the bottom graphic view. When trying to do anything with the drives, such as changing drive letter or even accessing properties, it shows an error saying "The operation failed to complete because the Disk Management console view is not up-to-date." Refreshing doesn't fix the issue.
  • Tons of smaller issues.
Are these signs of failing drives, or is this Windows messing up? The 2 drives in question are the WD Easystore 5TB External USB 3.0 Portable Hard Drive (purchased Dec 1, 2019) and the Western Digital WD Easystore 4TB External (purchased Jan 8, 2019).

I've attached some pictures that show some examples of what I'm talking about, any help would be awesome. Thanks so much!
explorer_2020-06-11_22;22;22.pngexplorer_2020-06-11_22;20;10.pngexplorer_2020-06-11_22;18;21.png
 
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Hi,

firstly, what version of Win 10 do you have?, an upgrade (if necessary) may help?.


Did you do an upgrade from Win 7/8 to Win 10?. :)
 
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Hi,

firstly, what version of Win 10 do you have?, an upgrade (if necessary) may help?.


Did you do an upgrade from Win 7/8 to Win 10?. :)

Thanks for the response! I'm running Windows 10 Version 1909, and the OS Build is "10.0.18363.836" I can't get the May 2020 update just yet because windows update says my system isn't compatible yet, but other than that I'm up to date!

And my computer never had Windows 7 or 8 on it, it's a custom made PC that has only had Windows 10 on it, no version upgrades have happened.
 
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As to your first three bulleted items, their actions seem to be normal, least they are the same as with my 2 USB 4TB drives [less than 3 years old].

As to your version of Win10 we are now at Version 1909 Build 18363.900 just the last few days. I've gotten Version 2004 on only one computer, appears it's not yet being offered as widely as in past times.
 
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I use the upgrade assistant, works on all my computers (4).

If his computer says it's not compatible yet, He SHOULD NOT upgrade at this time. There are some issues with legacy drivers that can cause major problems. My dad's PC says the same thing. And I know it's because it has an older nvidia card. There's been issues with booting to a black screen with legacy drivers. There is nothing wrong with him running 1909, or 1903.
 
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Several things come to mind, i would if possible DL the WD maint program, and run it. Maxtor (old) New WD had the same issues...
this is what i use - WDDriveUtilitiesSetup_for_web_2.0.0.63
external HDD, shut down the computer, uplug/remove the HHDs. next a bat command to see if it will fix Windows.
I call Healthfix.bat
------------------
dism /online /cleanup-image /scanhealth

dism /online /cleanup-image /checkhealth

dism /online /cleanup-image /restorehealth

sfc /scannow (some times this takes 3 or 4 to fix all the System File Corruption - read the log carefully)

DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth /source:WIM:I:\iso\sources\Install.esd:1 /LimitAccess
(if you have install.wim then change to read install.wim)

net stop wuauserv

net stop cryptSvc

net stop bits

net stop msiserver

ren C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution SoftwareDistribution.old
rmdir /s /q c:\windows\SoftwareDistribution.old

net start wuauserv

net start cryptSvc

net start bits

net start msiserver

net stop cryptsvc
rmdir /s /q %systemroot%\system32\catroot2.bak

md %systemroot%\system32\catroot2.bak

xcopy %systemroot%\system32\catroot2 %systemroot%\system32\catroot2.bak /s


pause
exit
------------------------------
generally this will fix the majority of issues...
you might also try the repair install - simply insert your bootable media, and run SETUP - if your image has a winre in the boot.wim it will repair if not then extract the iso to download \ iso and run the setup from there.
 
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As to your version of Win10 we are now at Version 1909 Build 18363.900 just the last few days.

So I tried updating and now the hard drives are acting like they should, go figure. Tried every other way except the easiest solution :rolleyes: I'm not gonna mark this thread as solved for just a couple more days until I can verify that this seems to be consistently fixed, but so far things are looking good. Thanks guys!
 
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Alright, so updating to build 18363.900 did not fix the issue, however I tried Snuffy's big list of commands and restarted my computer, and that seemed to fix the issue again. I'm assuming temporarily, but I'll keep this updated. In the meantime,

As to your first three bulleted items, their actions seem to be normal, least they are the same as with my 2 USB 4TB drives [less than 3 years old].

The main thing I'm concerned about here is that this is a new thing for my hard drives to be acting like this, and since I have sensitive data on those hard drives it's just unnerving for them to be acting differently. If this is just Windows being Windows and acting weirdly but not affecting my data, then I'm alright with dealing with it, albeit it is a bit of a nuisance.

Question, could it be something to do with the fact that I use those drives commonly in both my desktop and laptop? Sometimes it feels like its working as it should on one device and then suddenly having the symptoms I mentioned in my first post on another device, and vice-versa.
 
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Question, could it be something to do with the fact that I use those drives commonly in both my desktop and laptop? Sometimes it feels like its working as it should on one device and then suddenly having the symptoms I mentioned in my first post on another device, and vice-versa.
The answer to that would be Yes, any type of variables can cause issues. Both of my USB 4TB drives stay connected to my main Desktop. I use other choices for accessibility, one is 2 x 2TB NAS drives [also WD] connected to my Router via Ethernet cable and accessible by any computer I map them on. The other is a few pocketable USB drives like My Passport, have a couple of salvaged 2.5" drives in same type case.
 
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use on desktop laptop and any thing you want. I swap all my 2tb and 3tb WD around all the time, and carry to clients when i need info from them.
 
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Sorry for being away for a while, but I have an update. For about 2 weeks now the issue seems to have been fixed. The fix for my problem was going into Device Manager, right clicking all of the USB Root Hub entries and removing the check on "Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power." I'm not sure if it was actually this that solved the problem or a mix of other fixes added on to this one but this was the last step I did before the drives consistently acted correctly. Thank you guys for your help!
 

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