Windows 10: Really strange "can't initialize drive" problem. Can anyone think of anything to help?

Hello All


This is pretty much the oddest thing I have ever seen. My friend is having the same problem on two different computers with Windows 10 Pro.


She has tried cloning the Crives to new Samsung SSD drives, using two different drives and two different Sabrent USB enclosures, one of which is brand new, with new a USB cable.


With each PC, when she attaches the enclosure cable to the computer, with the drives inserted, she doesn't see the drive in This PC It also doesn't show up using the Samsung Migration or Samsung Magician software. When she opens disk management, it says the drive is not initialized. It also says the drive is offline. If she tries to initialize using GUID or put the drive online, she gets the same error message, "Request failed due to a fatal device hardware error," with no error code or option to get additional info.


The Sabrent enclosures show up in Device Manager as working properly.


How can this be?


This is two different Windows laptops, a Dell and Thinkpad one is right out of the box.

Two different new Samsung SSD drives one a 500 gig and the other a TB

Two different Sabrent enclosures

Two different USB cables


For the Dell, which she had earlier, she also tried putting two older drives - a Toshiba and WD Blue that had been formatted - into the enclosure, and the computer didn't see those either. We thought it might have been that the enclosure was defective, that WD Blue and Toshiba drives simultaneously broke down, and that the new 500 gig Samsung drive also was defective, as coincidental as that may seem. But now that we have two of everything - including two laptops - none of that seems possible. She actually took that Dell and new Samsung drive to a computer repair shop, and they couldn't clone it either, using their own enclosure.


Sooooo... short of sending us to see Rod Serling or Alfred Hitchcock for those who remember them, can anyone suggest anything that makes a lick of sense? My friend is starting to think she has a bad aura or something. I've followed her through this over the phone, and she seems to be doing everything right. I've cloned Samsung drives many times, including with Sabrent enclosures, and have never seen anything like this.


Incidentally, both computers CAN see my friend's USB Passport backup drive.


Any thoughts before we call in a exorcist? :O


Thank you!


Anthony Giorgianni




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:)

 

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Appreciate your detailed return. Your added steps really helped.

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