Major Pain in the arse HDD problems "not migrated due to partial or ambiguous match"

[Calavera]

Lately I've been having some hard drive issues. All kinds of different problems. I thought maybe a couple drive were going bad at the same time but wasn't quite sure. Then I tried them in a different computer and they worked with no issue. So the other day I got a new 4TB drive to replace the 4TB that was having problems. I start copying things from the old one to the new one and things are going fine. Then all of a sudden the speed drops to 0 and the drive isn't accessible anymore. The only way to get it to show up is to power off and on the PC.

First I think maybe the SATA cable is bad so I try a different one. That seems to work at first but then the same problem strikes. It seems to do it at random. Sometimes after many gigabytes and other times after only a few 100mb. So I'm looking through stuff and find that in the device manager under events for the drive it shows "not migrated due to partial or ambiguous match" Part of the error message is

"Device SCSI\Disk&Ven_TOSHIBA&Prod_DT01ABA200\7&2e1550d9&0&000000 was not migrated due to partial or ambiguous match.
Last Device Instance Id: SCSI\Disk&Ven_Samsung&Prod_SSD_840_Series\7&2e1550d9&0&050000"

I find that odd that it is showing the last instance ID as a Samsung 840 SSD as that is a drive I had in this computer quite awhile ago. So it seems for whatever reason it is remember the Samsung drive and not letting new drives properly install. I figure there has to be a way to remove the info for previous drives that are no longer in use.

I look online but can't really find any information that is helpful. First I learn of a tool in Windows called PnpUtil seems to do what I am looking for. You can remove devices using the instance id. So I use it and remove any mention of the Samsung 840 but still nothing.

Finally I go to regedit and search for the Samsung. Alright! I think I've found it. Under

"HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\Controlset001\Control\DeviceMigration\Devices\SCSI"

I find two folders one is "Disk&Ven_Samsung&Prod_SSD_840_Series\7&2e1550d9&0&050000" the exact instance id that is showing up in the migration error and another folder for some old Western Digital drive I had hooked up years ago. So I delete the Samsung folder, remove the drive from the device manager and reboot. Now it is still showing a migration error but is shows the last instance as the Western Digital Drive! So I remove it from the registry and reboot. Still migration error but now it is showing the last instance ID as some old USB drive. Instead of starting with SCSI like it was before it now starts with USBSTOR.

So I go back to the registry and go to

"HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\Controlset001\Control\DeviceMigration\Devices\USBSTOR"

There are two folders and I delete both of them. I then go to device manager and remove all drives that are showing migration errors and reboot. And.....no errors! All drives show "Device Configured" and "Device Started" with no "Device not migrated" errors at all! I have copied several 100gb to the new 4TB drive and have had no problems at all. For whatever reason those "Device not migrated" errors were causing all kinds of problems.

I'm glad that I got it fixed but I don't really understand how or why this happened. It must not be a very common problem because I could find no information about it online. I found plenty of information about the "Device not migrated" error but none of them really pertained to the problem I was having. I posted asking for help in r/techsupport but got no response. I did however post about how I fixed the problem incase somebody else is having the same issue. I didn't want to be one of those people who just post "nevermind I figured it out" lol.

It was a huge pain figuring all this out and getting the drive to work properly but I'm just glad it is all working now.

[Dr. Zoidberg]

Well done on getting it fixed.

Those sort of random PC problems can be as annoying and frustrating as hell to get sorted out.

[Calavera]

Well done on getting it fixed.

Those sort of random PC problems can be as annoying and frustrating as hell to get sorted out.

Thanks. I'm actually kind of proud that I was able to fix it somewhat on my own. When I was looking up solutions one came up about editing the registry but not in the way that I needed to. So it kind of pointed me in the right direction.

At first I thought I was going to have to do a fresh install of Windows but I REALLY didn't want to do that. I figured there had to be a way to remove the information about the previous drives. It is still weird that it even happened. I've never had anything like that happen in all my years of working on computers. Then again I have switched drives in and out of this one more than I have any other computer. It must be a rare problem to have. Hopefully if someone else in the future has the same problem my post on r/techsupport or even this one here will help them solve it.