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BSOD and maintenance of external HDs
Boggin:
For me it's never a good idea to download drivers from 3rd party sources.
HDSentinel shows 93% Health for the Kingston - is this the suspect HDD ?
I don't have a Portable Devices section in my Device Manager (as in the following article), so can't find the Microsoft WPD FileSystem Volume Driver on my Win 7 x64 Home laptop.
https://appuals.com/fix-wpd-filesystem-volume-driver-code-10-or-yellow-exclamation-mark/
My Seagate external drive is listed in Disk drives.
I'm not sure if a sfc /scannow may resolve that but you can uninstall it in Device Manager and then click on Action/Scan for hardware changes where Windows should reinstall it.
However, create a restore point before removing anything.
Can you open Device Manager - click on View/Show hidden devices and check for any other yellow alerts, but post a screenshot of your Device Manager.
Lady:
The Kingston is the SSD. See screenshot.
Can I remove HD Sentinel again to save the number of days or do you want any more additional information from it?
I just performed a defrag analysis via command prompt and it says that the WD HD has 4% fragmentation and need not be defragmented. So which one do I trust? Defraggler's or Windows's outcome?? That is a huge difference, 38 or 4%.
Just in case, I looked it up and I have a 2 year warranty on the HD. Bought it on Oct. 23, 2017.
I'm getting confused now, Tom. I read through the article. Solution 3 is about reinstalling the WPD Filesystem Volume Driver manually. Now I have 4 of these drivers under Portable Devices (Dutch: Draagbare apparaten) but the WD HD is under Disk Drives (Schijfstations) highlighted. See screenshot. This HD has password protection with hardware encryption.
I opened the Properties of the WD HD there. It says it works correct. I see two drivers under Details. See screenshots.
Another thing I thought about: I used a hub to connect the external HDs to while making the backups. I know a hub has its own driver, right? Could that one be the culprit? I know hubs can be very unstable, although this one, an Anker, is supposedly a good one.
What I don't understand is why the WD HD is under Disk Drives but the Windows error message was about the Volume Driver and they are under Portable Devices. So can you please explain this situation to me in the most basic way? Does the WD HD has its own driver or does Windows install a driver of its own on the HD? I may be saying crazy things but I'm way out of my league here.
Boggin:
Some 3rd party defrag programs can give anomalous results - although I've tried a 3rd party one in the past, I prefer to just use Windows own defrag program or the cmd prompt.
I don't think I've checked the fragmentation on my external HDDs but have used the cmd defrag /c to manually defrag my internal HDD which is what Windows does when auto checking all drives.
WPD stands for Windows Portable Devices and is a Windows driver to sync portable devices to the computer.
I think the reason why I don't have that in my Win 7 laptop is because it has AMD graphics and the South Bridge aspect of those drivers looks after the USB side of things.
It could very well be the hub that is causing the problem.
Try plugging in a HDD directly into the USB port and then go into Device Manager to see if you now get a WPD driver that doesn't have a yellow alert.
satrow:
Many of these WD drives use a controller chip between the SATA connection and the drive interface, this requires specific drivers (WD Smartware/SES?). It may also be set to auto-encrypt.
Should *something* go wrong with the controller, firmware, password, 'drivers' etc. all Windows-based tools will 'see' is a block of encrypted data, nothing can access the real data stored.
Take a little time to look at the topics on the WD portable 'support' site: https://community.wd.com/c/wd-external-drives/wd-portable-drives
--- Quote ---Capacity
4TB, 3TB, 2TB, 1TB
Interface
USB 3.0 / USB 2.0 compatible
Additional Details
* Auto backup with included WD Backup software
* Password protection with hardware encryption
* 3-year limited warranty
Package Includes
* My Passport hard drive
* USB 3.0 cable
* WD Discovery™ software for WD Backup™, WD Security™ and WD Drive Utilities™
* Quick install guide
--- End quote ---
Boggin:
Device Manager gives the HDD Properties as working fine - the yellow alerts are on the WPD drivers and Windows troubleshooter lists the WPD drivers as being at fault.
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