External HDD - Access Denied error

Pluginz said:

Ok,
When i had this problem with my USB hard drive, i kind of found my own work around which has seemed to clear it manually for now.

Corruption was being caused by a secondry 'volume' which had attatched itself to the USB disk whilst connected at some point. Maybe possibly in a Windows setup, i still dont know.
In the Windows setup, i could see that the problem USB disk had this bogus partition attatched to it, which was 0mb in size.
I just couldnt remove the damn thing. Well i could, if i wiped the whole drive.
So i deleted the whole disk, then created a new one, and it would re create itself and the 0mb partition re appeared in the Windows setup. Sticky thing.

I went to the Command Prompt and loaded up Diskpart.

I used the 'List Disk' command first. Then selected the problem disk with, 'Select Disk 1' for example.
Then i used the 'List Volume' and i found the little bugger!
The problem 0mb partition it looked like had attatched itself as another volume showing as 'Volume 0' !!!!

When i selected volume 0, next i did 'Delete Volume' this removed the 0mb partition i saw in the Windows setup, hooray

This has fixed the error for good. This same USB hard drive has now been installed into my desktop machine.
I have ran Seatools as its a Seagate Barracuda, with 100% good disk and no problems since !

I fired up mini tool partition wizard, and I don't see any ghost partition attached to my F: drive...

Ok gil,

I have looked at your picture thank you.

Again as in another thread, i am seeing that you have the same 16mb partition, which i am very dead against as this what was causing my disk to become RAW after a USB media created ISO install removing secure boot and uefi from the install.

I would think serious about removing these and starting again, re creating from scratch and installing Windows from a DVD.

Since i have removed the 16mb and started again, my 2TB Seagate is now alive again and healthy

Pluginz said:

Ok gil,

I have looked at your picture thank you.

Again as in another thread, i am seeing that you have the same 16mb partition, which i am very dead against as this what was causing my disk to become RAW after a USB media created ISO install removing secure boot and uefi from the install.

I would think serious about removing these and starting again, re creating from scratch and installing Windows from a DVD.

Since i have removed the 16mb and started again, my 2TB Seagate is now alive again and healthy

wait, I thought you meant the 0MB partition was in your external hard drive, not your C: drive.

so what does the 16MB on C: drive do to affect my F: drive?

The answer to that gil, with a good explanation is way out of my league.

All i know is my system has never ever had a 16mb partition created on any of my setups, it is totally the wrong size and i have owned my motherboard for almost 10 years now and have done 100's and 100's of practise setups and it doesnt go with my previous setup sizes, completely wrong. Very noticable !

Unless you have 100% full knowledge of what your reserved partition should be for your motherboard from studying your own system for years and years, its not an easy thing to judge from a less experienced angle, i understand that

On my system, It was only ever created only last year in 2021, after what i think to be a corrupt install of Windows from a USB stick. I have never experienced this from a DVD install