HD partitions visible only when plugged into motherboard and not when plugged as USB device ???

[PowerGod]

As a little update, my new HD is now working with Windows... and the funny thing is, that this vanilla installation on a vanilla HD has Windows Update not working... and seems like this is the rule as I read on many forums...
After trying all the official "fixing tools" both integrated and downloaded from Microsoft, DISM to check my windows image, SFC and also manual hacking of services and registry entries, I still obtained nothing...
My only hope was to update manually the "Windows Update" with a patch to be downloaded manually from the Microsoft site... but all the links to the file are 404...

So, my last choice will be to use a third party program called "WSUS Offline Update", but this is another story...

It could, and that would be annoying, but the issues with the old drive might just be because it's not working properly.

I tried to put the new HD with the vanilla installation in the USB box, and I have to confirm that its partitions are invisible too

I then put the faulty HD in the USB box to read it directly from Windows, and here the cool stuff: instead of seeing it as unpartitioned (like linux does), it tells that there is only one partition (that cover the full disk size) called "GPT protected partition" (roughly translated)...

Now, I could be wrong, but this seems to me some kind of deliberate way to bound a disk to a specific hardware...

Anyway, thanks to linux I was able to recover all the files I wanted from the disk, but there's one important thing missing... the last passwords that I saved only on the browser (I always backup those at intervals, but there are too many accounts around to be always up to date)... and those are recoverable only by using the exact same user...

So my last adventure will be to try a Windows restore on the faulty HD (now I can create all the installing supports that i want !! )... so, if i'm lucky, and I can start that Windows for one last time, I could export all my passwords...
Then I will be totally happy !! Because as of now, except for those passwords, I lost nothing !!

(I had anyway to juggle a lot with all my external supports to find the space to put all the stuff... I also had to store some of the files in the Pandora too... and had to delete all my re-downloadable games, like TBs of stuff... if I just think about how much time required to download them the first time )

 

[PowerGod]

Just as a test purpose, I extracted one of my external HDs from its box and put it into my PC.
I never had the need to do something like this before...
Guess what ?
"GPT protected partition"

This damn GPT thing was everywhere around me for all the time and still I didn't see it coming.
I feel like I just wear the "They Live" sunglasses.

 

[PowerGod]

So, I finally found the time to try extracting my possibly lost passwords from my old HD... and guess what ?

tl;dr
I gave up and just destroyed that damn GPT partition on it... converted to MBR and formatted the whole thing...

Full version:
I was at the point when in that disk the OS wasn't able to either boot or recover itself... so, I just wanted to try something "simple"... recover the OS from an installation DVD...
So, I got the ISO from Microsoft site and just made a USB key with it... but didn't work... so I had more try with other USB creator programs but with no success... (I tried UNETBOOTIN, LinuxLive USB creator, YUMI, RUFUS).
Then I made a damn DVD... and that started... and gave me 2 options:
1) Install from scratch (erasing everything on the HD)
2) Update (maintaining data on the HD)

I choose the second option just to read a note telling "To update, start the main os on the HD and keep this DVD inserted"
Naturally, the main OS wasn't able to start, so no update...

After reading a lot of stuff on the internet, I came to the conclusion that the ONLY way to remove a GPT protection without losing files is to buy some professional software... and this wasn't the right case to do that...

so, in the end, I just plugged it as an external drive again and:

diskpart
select disk 3
clean
convert mbr

Then I put it back as a secondary HD in my PC and finally I was able to format it...

EDIT:
oh, and if someone asks "why don't covert it directly from disk management ?", well, with a GPT partition ALL the options are disabled there, even format...