Windows 10: Lost access to drive - "Access is Denied"

My entire PC is new. I built it with all brand-new parts and a retail Windows 10 install thumb drive. So my old Windows 7 PC didn't have the 100 chipset. It was approaching 6 years old and didn't even have USB 3 ports - I needed to use a USB 3 card for my old Windows 7 PC. Of course my new motherboard (Gigabyte Z170x Gaming-7) has built-in USB 3.0 support so I no longer need the USB card. I did try touse the card at first to expand the number of ports but the card did not work at all on my new PC - I noticed the MOLEX power port was cracked on the card somehow and I don't think the card was getting power - I may have cracked it when moving it to my new PC.

 

I passed on the information about my chipset to Icy Dock today. Gigabyte thought maybe it could be an incompatibility with these enclosures with the Intel Z170 chipset. So Icy Dock said they will look into that as a possible issue. Meanwhile I'm basically stuck right now. I don't dare turn on any of my enclosures with my drives inside until I finish clearing some data so I have a couple test drives. That's what I've been working on.

 

Well I received a response back from Icy Dock today. I'm not too happy honestly. They provided me a list of what I have to do before they send out a new unit for testing. Note that they are now telling me the unit is for testing only and that I must ship it back to them when I'm finished - I cannot keep it. This is the first time they disclosed this important bit of information to me. Here's what I need to do:

- register my existing unit on their site
- file an RMA for the unit on their site
- fill out an Advance RMA agreement that they attached in their email
- fill out a credit card form they attached in their email

They wrote, "There will be a pending charge on the card, however, you do not have to pay this charge provided that we receive the unit back after testing. Once we have received the two forms along with the online RMA request, we can send out the MB174U3S-4SB with the new firmware to test. If you need any assistance with the RMA forms, feel free to send us an email."

Their unit corrupted two of my hard drives and these are the hoops they put me through. Not happy. I do not like the idea of a pending charge for around $100 sitting indefinitely on my card until I return the unit. And I'm guessing I would have to pay for return shipping? They don't say one way or the other about return shipping being covered by them.

These are a lot of hoops to jump through just to get to "test" their firmware and not even get to keep the unit considering the trouble I've already gone through. If they are going to go through this much trouble, why can't they just let me download the new firmware and try it myself on one of my existing units? And keep in mind that the new firmware only disables the WD green drives' Intellipark features - that's it. They keep focusing on that as the issue, even though I have been using these same exact green drives in the same exact enclosures for over 2 years on my old PC. Gigabyte strongly suggested that it was an incompatibility with many of these older enclosures and the Intel Z170 chipset on my new motherboard. If that's the case, then all of this credit card authorization and shipping the unit back will all be a waste of time. Shame they are going to put me through so many hoops just to temporarily try out the unit. Seriously, I have already bought 3 of these in the last 2 years. Would it kill them to ship one out and write it off considering the grief their unit put me through?

I'm almost at the point where I'd rather just buy another manufacturer's enclosure and try it myself and keep it if it works, but there aren't many choices out there for 4-bay enclosures that are affordable. About the only other one out there that doesn't get terrible reviews is the Mediasonic USB/esata enclosure, and that has been available for years. I doubt if they have changed anything since it first hit the market, and their USB 3 flat-out didn't work at all on my old PC's USB 3 card. Maybe it will work better now on my new PC?

 

I noticed on Amazon under a different enclosure review, somebody else had the same error message I've been getting:

https://www.amazon.com/ORICO-Aluminu...ws/B00K7W5RGI/

'I am, however, getting Event 158 warnings. Those are "Disk 4 has the same disk identifiers as one or more disks connected to the system. Go to Microsoft's support website [...] and search for KB2983588 to resolve the issue." I was getting the same warnings under the shipping firmware."

It's a different enclosure than mine but this suggests that these enclosures are causing a lot of problems for some people. Is it a power option that is causing issues? Chipset incompatibility? Windows 10 issue? USB driver issues? I don't know, but I"m starting to worry that I may never get to the bottom of this. I don't know what I'm supposed to do if I can't even use enclosures for storage on my new PC.

Also there's an older thread on this forum from last year about this message but there was no resolution to the issue:

Event ID 158 - disk identifiers duplicate

I'm starting to wonder if this is a Windows 10 issue after all. I can't believe nobody seems to know anything about this issue.

Would changing any RAID settings in the BIOS help? Maybe my Gigabtye motherboard need to have a RAID option set in the BIOS to recognize multiple drives correctly in external enclosures?

 

My apologies for the multiple posts but I'm doing my best to try and track down this issue. I think I may have stumbled upon something that may be key here. I found this on another review of that ORICO enclosure review I linked to above:

"Also, if you're on Windows 8.1 or Windows 10, there are some registry changes that are largely undocumented that you should know about. This enclosure along with many other new ones don't run under "USB" drivers in new versions of Windows. UASP is what gives these things such great speed. Windows natively supports this, but the USAPStor driver was written in 2006 and has never been updated. It currently has power management enabled, and it can't be shut off. A common symptom of this (despite making any changes you want to the registry and power management window) is when drives randomly drop out and don't reappear. I've been running Windows Storage spaces using 5 drives. Couldn't figure out for the last month why (using three different docks) I kept loosing my array of drives. I'd walk in and find the enclosure off. There's a line that's added by the UASPSTOR driver called "EnableIdlePowerManagement" under the StorPort registry key for each drive you add. Setting EnableIdlePowerManagement to 0 (I added the dword32 value to each device in addition to the hub) fixes this problem.
I know - that was really geek and you have no clue what I'm talking about... But if you're lucky, someone with more time than I have (having lost months of my life researching this) will understand what I've done here, and get stupid MS to update their drivers."

Could this be tied into my issue? The Icy Dock enclosures I have specifically mentions "Supports UASP function for even faster performance" under the specs of my enclosures.

I took a peek into regedit just to see if I see any EnableIdlePowerManagement entries under storport, and thee are several listed under different device parameters, but I'm not comfortable making any changes to any of those entries without being certain that it won't have any negative effect, especially since I don't know which drives those entries are for.

But, this does make me wonder then, since there may be an issue with these UASP enclosures and Windows 10, - could I avoid this issue by using an enclosure that doesn't support UASP? My older Mediasonc enclosures specifically say on their site that they don't support UASP. Perhaps I need to do some testing with my current Mediasonic enclosures. this would point back at the Icy Docks as being the problem here (well, Microsoft, really, but Icy Docks since their enclosures support UASP).

This does make some sense, since my old Windows 7 PC didn't support UASP, so the Icy Docks wouldn't have run into this issue on my Windows 7 PC. Now that they are running on my Windows 10 PC, the UASP power management issue may be coming into play?

Any thoughts? I realize this is very technical but that's what this forum is for, right? I'm wondering if the UASP support in the Icy Docks are to blame. If so the answer would be to use enclosures that don't support UASP like Mediasonic. This sounds like a major screw-up between the device manufacturers that use UASP and Microsoft, since many of the newer enclosures do seem to support UASP now.

Can I disable UASP support in Windows 10, to force the enclosures to use the USB 3.0 drivers in BOT mode like Windows 7 instead of UASP?

And here's a link to a description of UASP from a different enclosure manufacturer:

http://https://blog.startech.com/pos...ow-about-uasp/

Gigabyte suggested this morning I try the enclosures over my front USB 2.0 ports since that would obviously avoid using UASP since UASP is over USB 3.0 only. Also note I have now disabled "Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power" under power options of all USB drivers listed in device manager. Would that disable the UASP problem with disks spinning down and losing connection? Maybe I've already fixed the issue and don't know it because I haven't done any more testing yet?

Also, remember that reading from my Icy Dock was fine, as I first zipped some files up from my Icy Dock to my internal drive, and the zipping process went fast and flawless. It was only when I tried to copy some files over to the Icy Dock that the drive got corrupted and I got locked out of the drive. Reading to the Icy Dock was fine, writing caused corruption.

Another clue that UASP may be at the heart of all my grief here: I found out on another forum that I can check to see if UASP is being used for any currently connected USB drives. When I insert my USB 3 thumb drive, and check device manager, the driver shows USBSTOR.sys is in use. If UASP was being used, it would say UASPStor.sys. I have no problems reading and writing to my USB thumb drive.

I also read this:

"UASP standards solidified near the end of USB 3.0 development so most USB 3.0 storage products are not UASP compatible. Some buggy chips were produced so some products claiming UASP support have been blacklisted."

 

I think you are probably onto it. I see entries in my registry with enableidlepowermanagement set to '1'.

It may just be that the driver writers and hardware vendors have not got all the loose ends tied up yet. Pretty bad news, though, for those affected.

 

Thanks for following this thread. I know it's a lot to take in, and hard to describe in forums.

Well I talked to Icy Dock about my USAP theory today. They will "look into it". He told me the Black Vortex doesn't support USAP, but I told him I think he is wrong. On their product page it says in several places that it does support USAP. I don't expect anything to come from my talking with Icy Dock. Their enclosure corrupted my drives and it's still under warranty but I'm supposed to let them put a hold on my credit card for $100 just to test some firmware they've cooked up that I don't even think will address my issue because they are focusing on the fact that one drive is a green drive. I think it's far more likely that it's a USAP issue.

Like you said, that's bad news if this is the case, since all I can do is buy enclosures that don't support USAP. Too bad because the cooling solution is better on these Icy Dock drives than some of the other enclosures I've seen. I started a new thread here

https://www.tenforums.com/general-sup...tml#post846751

to see if there's a way to disable USAP in Windows 10. I doubt it though. It's also sad that I have to stumble onto this issue the hard way - with corrupted/lost data. They are selling these things with USAP support. If USAP is unstable and can corrupt data due to dropping drives in USB enclosures, then the enclosure manufacturers shouldn't be supporting USAP. Or at least offer a way to bypass it. They are supposed to be the experts , and we trust that they test their products. I was going to test the Icy Dock on my USB 2.0 port but from what I read USAP can even be supported over USB 2. Not that I want USB 2 speeds, but at least I could try to rule out USAP or pinpoint it if it's really the issue here. I may have to break down and buy a Mediasonic enclosure with USB 3 support and see how it works for me (if at all). I know the Mediasonic I'm looking at doesn't support USAP.

I'm very nervous about touching those enableidlepowermanagement entries in my registry since I don't know which drives those entries are for, and I shouldn't need to do that anyways. Strange how I could read from that enclosure but the moment I tried writing it froze and led to corruption.

 

This is outrageous that ICY Dock is asking you to test new firmware for their enclosures on your computer and they are going to charge your credit card for the enclosure if you don't send it back!!
I don't think this is a issue with USAP, but more with the USB Controller in their enclosure and it's firmware. I would review this enclosure on every site they sell it on and tell your story warning others not to buy it.

 

Yeah, I'm pretty upset that Icy Dock hit with me that list this morning. Since I'm still stuck with 3 Icy Dock enclosures, all still under the warranty, and I can't use them currently, and one of them cost me over 1TB of data, they should refund my money and I'd ship them back in the boxes they came in. What good are they to me? You may very well be right about their USB controller being at fault. The thing is I'm afraid to test my other enclosures (an esata and a USB 2) until I have some drives ready that I'm prepared to sacrifice if they get corrupted, since I'm still unsure what is the cause. All I have to go on is the following:

- Icy dock enclosures (with UASP support) used to work with my old Win 7 PC
- Same enclosure corrupted my drives in my Win 10 PC the first time I used it to write data
- My USB thumb drive (which doesn't use UASP) works perfectly fine.

But I'm no expert by any means so I'm just trying to figure out what could really be behind this.

 

I did get an email just a while ago from Icy Dock asking for more information on my UASP theory. They wanted the link to the review on Amazon that mentioned this possible issue and the registry entry about the EnableIdlePowerManagement. They seem to want to look into this, but it's obvious right now they have no idea what's the cause of this issue, and meanwhile, I can't use my external drives or enclosures.

I may very well post a review about what happened. I hate to do it but people should be warned about the possibility of data corruption, and you're right that they shouldn't be putting a hold on my card and threatening to charge it if I don't return it after all the grief I've already gone through.

 

Rivre, I understand your frustration with IcyDock, I'm afraid I wouldn't trust my drives in them either. A couple of suggestions, if I may . . .

1. Check with your technical friends and see if they may have any old SATA hard drives you could use to test with.

2. Check with your local "mom and pop" computer store to see if they have any old "trade-in" type SATA hard drives you could use to test with.

3. If you write a review, be as positive as you can. Kind of like: "This is my experience, and Icy Dock is really cooperating with me to try and solve the problems." also point out how many of these enclosures you have, how many hard drives have been cratered and how much data you've lost. Especially point out the irretrievable data that's been lost. I must reiterate: Give Icy Dock kudos for the lengths they're willing to go. However, be sure to let the readers (and Icy Dock) know that although you're willing to help them out by testing their latest enclosures/firmware, you don't think you should bear the burden of the expense, since you've already lost so much. Pick out the two largest suppliers of the enclosures to send your review to. You will make an impact and reach the most people.

4. You should negotiate with Icy Dock, giving them the information you've given in your review(s) about your losses. Explain that you're willing to test, but . . . you cannot afford to suffer any more losses due to inadequate hardware.

5. If you can't come to a satisfactory agreement, request an RMA/refund from Icy Dock because their enclosures aren't doing the job. Explain that you have taken this course of action because you no longer trust the product and that you're not willing to sacrifice any more hard drives.

 

Some very good advice. Thank you. Sadly I don't have any technical friends. I wish I did. I have been backing up my data so I can use a couple of my old blue and green drives for testing without fear of further losses.

 

I received a follow-up from Icy Dock today:

"Sorry for the lack of response after the information you have provided. After looking a bit more into the issue, we feel that it might be more of a chipset interaction issue between the external units and chipsets on motherboards. There has been not too many cases regarding some of our other products that has USB 3.0 with UASP and feel the chipset differences between the models could be a possible cause.

To best test this possibility, we would like to send you the MB174U3S-4SB with the changed firmware to see if a firmware change can help on this issue. I know you might have concerns regarding a possible held charge on a card. To clarify on the use of credit card info, we would only check if the card is valid to insure the unit we may send. There will be no such charges on your end and nothing will show up on your end, provided that we receive the test unit back after testing. The only case where we would have to charge would be not returning the test unit.

Please fill out these two forms and fill out a RMA request on this site. If you do not want to provide the credit card info on the form, you can call use to provide this over the phone. Once we have receive the forms and RMA request, we can send out the test unit."

Personally, I still feel like this is totally unacceptable. I own 3 of these things and it sounds more and more like they are just totally unusable with my new computer based on a chipset incompatibility. All 3 enclosures are still under warranty. Based on this, I should be able to demand a refund since they have $400 of my money and I have some paperweights at this point. Instead, they want to put me through even more hassle by me giving them my credit card info, and having to send the test unit back which is another hassle. Am I wrong in thinking at this point that since they think it's a fault on their end with firmware issues, they should be the ones jumping through hoops, not me? Is it not possible to just send me an updated firmware to try on my current units? If they want me to test their firmware with my hard drives, they should send me a test unit to keep. I shouldn't have to go through the added hassle of packing it back up and going to the post office or UPS store to send it back.

And it seems that they are totally guessing on this. They claimed earlier they thought the issue was related to the WD green drives and said the test firmware would target that issue. Now they are saying they think it's a chipset issue with my motherboard but want me to go through the hassle of testing their new firmware anyways, even though it doesn't sound like they did anything with the firmware to address the chipset issue. They're just guessing and they want me to be their tester at this point. What do I get in return? I don't even get to keep the test unit. Am I wrong in how I'm looking at this?

 

Rivre, ask them to update the firmware on the units you have. Because if the test they send works, they'd have to update the firmware on your units anyway. Unless there's not a way to update . . .

I still remember an HP color laser printer I had that HP wouldn't update between Vista and Windows 7! Grrrrrrrrr, but my point is that they may not be willing to update the firmware in your units. Mt printer was still in warranty, but HP wouldn't update drivers to the latest for Windows 7.

So, to reiterate, ask them to update the firmware . . .

 

I just requested that they provide me with the firmware and instructions for me to install it. They may not have a way for me to update the unit myself if they didn't provide that functionality. I guess I'll find out soon. I also told them if this doesn't get resolved I expect a full refund of the 3 units I own, as I spend a considerable amount of money on them and they are currently unusable in my current system and they are still under manufacturer warranty. I agreed to send the units back in the original boxes. I doubt they would go along with that considering they're still pushing for my credit card info just to test their new firmware.

I doubt their new firmware would make any difference. They didn't test it with my current chipset. They told me last week it was developed to address the green drives spinning down. So I don't see how that would help with a chipset incompatibility if that's what it is.