Question WD Elements Loses Network Share Permissions

[mindless1]

Anyone know of a reason why a Western Digital Elements 6TB External HDD would lose network share permissions on a Win7 system?

System had been running for years, no Windows updates recently, has had multiple internal and external HDDs for years. Never had any problem making network shares of any other drives, all stay permanently shared.

Hooked the WD Elements up and it keeps losing permissions, works for a while (not sure how long) then changes to not shared, while all other HDDs remain shared, and all were set up to share, identically AFAICT... NTFS, Primary Partition, Basic Disk, and no drive letter conflicts. It is not losing the share the moment (at least not the first time) the HDD goes to sleep. These are not mapped (to a drive letter on client) shares.

The only difference I can think of is it is connected through the USB hub built into a Seagate BackupPlus External HDD enclosure, but that Seagate drive never loses share permissions.

I gave it CMD net config server /autodisconnect:-1 a few days ago to see if that makes any difference. It did not, drive was shared at least 1-2 days, then by the 3rd day, drive became unshared.

 

[Tech Junky]

I would probably just shuck it and put it into a different enclosure or NAS. Sounds like it's probably about to sizzle the controller / USB connection. Might be a good idea to check the SMART data on it as well looking for potential issues.

 

[Zoozuu]

I would try a different cable first. Also hubs are usually fine if devices aren't powered through the hub.

 

[mindless1]

I would probably just shuck it and put it into a different enclosure or NAS. Sounds like it's probably about to sizzle the controller / USB connection. Might be a good idea to check the SMART data on it as well looking for potential issues.

Well, it's brand new... I mean a couple weeks old, works perfectly fine (otherwise). When the share permission goes away, the host system has no problem accessing it, doesn't drop off the USB controller or anything, so nothing wrong with the cable either. To get the share working again it is just a matter of going into the properties for it and enabling sharing again, but why is it losing this again and again when no other drives, ever have.

WD's diagnostics app shows SMART "Pass", also had it do a test, tested cable and quick smart test
passed.

 

[Tech Junky]

System had been running for years

This is why I said to check things thinking you were talking about the drive. Being new though is a different story.

There might be something in w7 that's borked and needs repair.

 

[Zoozuu]

I would back up the files format the hdd then recopy everything back to the hdd. Most problems are solved via nukes. Get rid of anything that could cause a problem and then go up from there.

 

[mindless1]

This is why I said to check things thinking you were talking about the drive. Being new though is a different story.

There might be something in w7 that's borked and needs repair.

Yes it's new, so it's not as though it used to stay shared and now is started to become unshared, rather it has been doing this since the moment it was hooked up. Initial testing of the drive was done on a different system, where there was no sharing/settings touched.

But then why would it only lose the share info for this one drive? It seems like there is something about it, windows is treating differently than the rest, all the other shared drives. The system in question is completely stable otherwise.

I'm guessing I have to relearn things I used to know about drive volumes in the registry and compare the listings between those that don't lose share status and this one that does... unless WD did something screwy to punish people who bought their lower cost drive. They also seem to have left out support for other basic things on the Elements, like changing the sleep timeout minutes or disabling it. I could be wrong on that, haven't really dug into it enough to be sure.

 

[Zoozuu]

A good program/operating system to check out file system health and easily check flags ect and format. Gparted live usb/puppy linux.

 

[mindless1]

^ I'm pretty sure this is not a file system health issue. As stated previously, when the share permission reverts to not shared, the host has no problem reading it like nothing happened, and the networked clients have no problem reading it once I go in again and set the drive back to shared.

The question is what is unique about WD Elements that causes windows to lose it's shared volume status.

I may just try some random things if no specific relevant data comes my way, like sharing on a different system, or changing the drive letter on the system it's on, or deleting the registry entries recorded for this drive and letting Windows redetect it anew, using a USB port or hub... there are several things I can try but was hoping someone knew of something unique about the current gen WD elements because this is really, really strange that it only affects this one, new, drive... also considering, it wasn't that long ago that I added another 6TB external Seagate to the same system and it doesn't have this problem.

 

[mindless1]

I've tried a couple more things.

1. Press Windows +R and type in : regedit
2. In Regedit, navigate to HKLM//SOFTWARE//Microsoft//Windows //Current Version//Policies //System.
3. Create a new REG_DWORD entry named "EnableLinkedConnections".
4. Set its value to 1.

^ That didn't help.

Shared Folder Becomes Unshared

social.technet.microsoft.com

I realized that if I reboot the system, the share is gone, shows as unshared in its properties. However if I use services.msc to restart the Server, service, after a reboot, the share comes back and works.

It makes me wonder if the Elements external is staying asleep till too late in the boot process, and then what do I do to resolve this?

 

[mindless1]

I tried running this batch file on windows startup, but had mixed results... sometimes it works, sometimes all I do is reboot again and it doesn't work.

DIR J:
timeout 15
net stop server /y /y
net start server

This is getting annoying so I switched the WD Elements over to using a PCIe card port instead of the hub on the Seagate enclosure. So far, that works after every reboot, the WD Elements remains shared.

However, I switched a different Seagate External from that PCIe card port, to the Seagate enclosure's hub port, and that other Seagate shows up shared just fine after a reboot, unlike the WD Elements.

 

[Zoozuu]

I've had two wd elements 12tb and 18tb both as samba shares for 120+ days I've never had a permission problem except when a download corrupted. Only had mounting booting and power problems when using a hub.. It doesn't sound like your w7 computer is borked since the other drives have no problems. I would return/exchange it as it's most likely defective.

 

[mindless1]

^ I'm suspecting it's something about the hub in the Seagate Enclosure, maybe in a lower power state, combined with the Elements spinning down immediately unlike the other Seagate, so it isn't available when the server service enumerates shares.

Windows may partially be to blame for this too, by design in only giving it one go at enumerating shares, when it does. Every single time I manually restarted the server service, the Elements returned to shared, until a reboot.