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I purchased a 2.5 inch laptop drive with an external case that allows for esata or usb connections. Since the external drive is used to host virtual machines i initially set the drive over the esata connection and formatting the drive using NTFS.

So far everything is working fine.

Now if i connect the drive using USB i receive a message (Win 7) saying that the drive is unrecognized and needs to be formatted.

The drive has already been formatted as NTFS so not sure why this is happening?

Also If i format the drive over USB then switch over to esata the same message appears.

Why is it not possible to alternate the connections?

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1 Answer 1

I have a 2.5" 500GB SATA drive inside a VanTec eSATA/USB2 enclosure and it allows me to switch between the two interfaces at any time, so yes it's definitely possible.

I am wondering what is malfunctioning in your situation. Have you tried shutting the computer off, connecting JUST USB, and then booting up? Does it still say the drive is unrecognized?

If so, it might be a bug in your external enclosure as I've never heard of this.

Is your drive extra large by chance? (2TB or bigger)? That could be an issue if something in your chain doesn't support large sector sizes (Advanced Format).

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