External USB Drive: Need to Repair MBR, Drive Not Recognized (“No Media”)

Topic

New Reply

I have a USB external hard drive being used as a UPnP media server attached to my ASUS router. Last night the drive stopped being recognized. Ironically, the files can still be accessed through the shared folder on the network.

However, the drive itself can no longer be accessed and Windows disk manager states “No Media”. Changing the drive letter does not help.

I suspect the Master Boot Record is corrupt. I am very surprised but I can find no procedure or third party tools to help me recover the MBR.
The third party tools for MBR repair I have tried do not list the drive so I cannot use the repair functions.

Looking for guidance on how to proceed with MBR repair. The files are still there on the drive. Therefore, I don’t think think this is a hardware issue.

My only other route is to copy the files first through the shared drive or recover from my cloud backup. Then… reformat the external drive and copy back the files. However, that procedure would take hours. Since the files are there and this does not appear to be a hardware issue, rebuilding the MBR would be desirable but doing this seems to be very difficult.

Any advice is appreciated. Thank you.

Reply | Quote

Replies

You do not need an MBR to use it as a media server disk (or any disk) on your router.

Where is the drive not recognized? if it’s just Windows this is not entirely surprising for a disk used on a router as the format may be non-Windows.

Try installing MiniTool Partition Wizard in Windows to view the disk. Let us know what you find.

cheers, Paul

Reply | Quote

The drive is NTFS. It’s not recognized when I remove it from the router and plug it directly into my computer via USB. I tried using MiniTool and AOEMI Partition Assistant but neither lists the drive. It does show up in Windows Disk Manager but with no size and no media.

The ASUS router logs do show ntfs errors and a need to run chkdsk. In the ASUS router a folder has been specified for network access. I can still reach this folder from Windows as a mapped network drive and see the files.

I find it strange I can still reach the files with the mapped drive but not through direct USB connection. The UPnP media server is not accessible from Roku or any other device.

Reply | Quote

I think I made a mistake in citing MBR. This is a Glyph external drive and I followed their instructions 2 years ago for formatting it for Windiws 10. I think the drive is using GPT, not MBR.

Reply | Quote

This tool looks very promising:

https://sourceforge.net/projects/gptfdisk/

The documentation seems to confirm my scenario. The partition data is intact but inaccessible probably due to GPT data structure corruption. Going to give this a try later. I finished rescuing all the data through the mapped network drive.

Reply | Quote

If you can’t see the disk at all using 3rd party tools then the disk / interface may be unwell. I would just get a new disk.

cheers, Paul

Reply | Quote

Unfortunately, this is looking like a hardware failure. gdisk cannot see it, and the drive is not accessible using Windows Recovery options and the command prompt.

I decided to try and wipe the drive and reformat it but I cannot even do that. The clean command from diskpart fails. Although the drive is visible in Disk Manager, there is no option to format the drive. I’m guessing that is because it just states, “No Media”.

This is sad since Glyph drives are supposed to be very durable. I have other Glyph drives that are years old. This drive is just over 2 years old.

At least it was easy to rescue all the files without having to retrieve them from the cloud backup. I’m going to have to pursue getting a replacement drive unless someone else has a suggestion.

Reply | Quote

I fixed it! The ASUS router has a built-in “health check” function that can access the USB drive attached to it. The health check found several problems and repaired them. After the health check and re-scan completed, the drive became accessible once again to external devices. Reduced log:

 

ntfsck 3014.5.21
Checking NTFS Superblock …
Device name : /dev/sda2
NTFS volume version: 3.1
Cluster size : 4096 bytes
Current volume size: 2000381014528 bytes (2000382 MB)
Current device size: 2000381018112 bytes (2000382 MB)
Checking for bad sectors …
Scanning $MFT …
Could not read “02 Seven Drones..jpg” (inode=3065).
Checking directory structure …
Corrupt directory found, inode=3042 (0xbe2)
Repairing corrupt directories started.
0.00 percent completed
0.28 percent completed
…
100.00 percent completed
Actual VCN (0x4235dd607889df79) of index buffer is different from expected VCN (0x0) in inode 0x8ce5.
Repairing corrupt directories completed.
Corrupt directory found, inode=36069 (0x8ce5)
Repairing corrupt directories started.
0.00 percent completed
0.28 percent completed
…
100.00 percent completed
this seems to be endless.
Repairing corrupt directories completed.
Checking for orphaned files …
0.00 percent completed
Deleting orphaned inode 16 (0x10)
Deleting orphaned inode 17 (0x11)
Deleting orphaned inode 18 (0x12)
Deleting orphaned inode 19 (0x13)
Deleting orphaned inode 20 (0x14)
Deleting orphaned inode 21 (0x15)
Deleting orphaned inode 22 (0x16)
Deleting orphaned inode 23 (0x17)
0.28 percent completed
0.55 percent completed
…
100.00 percent completed
Scanning orphaned files completed.
Checking attributes …
0.00 percent completed
0.28 percent completed
…
100.00 percent completed
Checking cluster allocation …
0.00 percent completed
0.28 percent completed
…
100.00 percent completed
Checking cluster allocation bitmap …
Cluster accounting failed at 5570413 – 5570418 (0x54ff6d – 0x54ff72): extra cluster in $Bitmap
Cluster accounting failed at 5570429 – 5570433 (0x54ff7d – 0x54ff81): extra cluster in $Bitmap
… 28 entries total
Totally 27499 cluster accounting mismatches.
Checking $MFT bitmap …
0.00 percent completed
0.28 percent completed
…
100.00 percent completed
Fixing $MFT bitmap
Fixed $MFT bitmap
Checking directory structure second time …
Space in use : 933878 MB (46.7%)
Done NTFS checking and repair on device ‘/dev/sda2’.
Syncing device …

Reply | Quote

I’ll monitor the router log closely for two weeks and see if errors return indicating there is hardware problem with the drive.

Reply | Quote

You probably have missing / corrupt files after that repair. I would check some of the files reported to see if they are OK.

Now you need to implement a backup regime for the shared disk.

cheers, Paul

Reply | Quote

Yes… I used a diff tool against a backup and there were about a dozen files to reconcile. All good now.

Reply | Quote