DLGDIAG cannot see external HDD as Physical Drive

[nineine]

I've been trying to use DLGDIAG(WinDLG) to run a diagnostics on my Western Digital 640GB Caviar Black HDD. The drive appears as a Logical Drive but not as a Physical Drive, while my primary drive appears under both. I am unable to run a diagnostics unless it is shown under Physical Drives.

It is a brand new drive and I have it plugged into my Thermaltake BlacX External Drive Dock, which is connected to my Windows 7 PC via USB. After connecting it to my PC, I went into Computer Management in Windows, partitioned the drive, assigned a drive letter, quick formatted it, and set it to active.

Could somebody help please me out here?

[GlobalForce]

Run WinDLG as administrator - http://community.wdc.com/t5/forums/f...64C3770975EE02

[nineine]

Originally Posted by GlobalForce

Run WinDLG as administrator - http://community.wdc.com/t5/forums/f...64C3770975EE02

That wasn't the problem... it was already running as administrator. UAC always asks to elevate WinDLG as soon as I run it. I also tried "Run as Administrator" and ended up with the same results. I have figured out what the problem was though.

{Note: take notice of situations [1], [2], & [3] from the following paragraph... you will need these in order to understand the third paragraph}

[1]If I left the drive status as "Unallocated Space"(not assigning a drive letter or formatting) and ran WinDLG, it would not detect it. [2]If I assigned a drive letter, performed a quick format(changed file system from RAW to NTFS) and ran WinDLG, it would not detect it. [3]If I assigned a drive letter without formatting(kept file system as RAW) and ran WinDLG, only then it would detect it.

Here's the weird thing. If I did [3](so WinDLG sees the drive) and left WinDLG running, then changed the hard drive status to [2] or [1], WinDLG would still be able to see the drive. If I did [1] or [2](so WinDLG cannot see the drive) and left WinDLG running, then changed the hard drive status to [3], WinDLG would suddenly detect the drive.

So after figuring out that mess, I went on to run an extended diagnostics test on the hard drive in WinDLG. As any new hard drive should, it passed the test without issues, after about 7 hours.

I do now have one other problem though. WinDLG cannot detect the SMART Status, SMART Disk Info, Serial Number, or Firmware Revision of the hard drive. I decided to try putting my hard drive into an external case, and checking that way. I put it into my Thermaltake Max 4 Arctic Cooling External HDD Enclosure, and checked the drive in WinDLG. This time it could see the SMART Status, as well as the other information. So the culprit here seems to be my Thermaltake BlacX HDD Dock.

Now onto all the questions. Hopefully somebody out there somewhere in the Wildersness could answer these:

Why does my drive need to be assigned a drive letter & left in RAW in order for WinDLG to detect it?
Why does it continue to see the drive if I change the status of the drive while keeping the program running?
Why doesn't my dock detect the drive's SMART Status/other details while my external case does?
Why!! ..why.