Possible Signature Collisions with Storage Spaces Disks?

Question

Hello, I hope someone here can help. I've been pulling my hair out for days now on this and it just gets more bizarre the more I find.

The naked problem is that 2 of 4 disks from my Storage Spaces array (striping with parity) on my Windows 10 machine, after 2 years of flawless operation, started hanging any disk operation in any program so long as they were connected. For example Disk Manager will not load until I disconnect them. Same with PowerShell, Storage Spaces, or even Explorer. The moment I disconnect them, though, everything loads fine. If I plug them back in, I get the same behavior. Queue my rising stress levels. This was working fine for a long time, now this?

Initially I thought it was the Sabrent 4 bay dock where I was keeping the 2 problem disks going bad. So I removed it from the equation (connecting all 4 disks via USB). But then when I added a new drive to the pool, it started doing the same thing, having no interaction with the dock. The other weird thing is these problem disks (now 3 of the 5 total) are the same brand and model, ADATA HV620s. Weirder yet, Get-PhysicalDisk returns an OK/Healthy operational/health status for all drives. And Get-StoragePool returns the same.

Fast forward to my first actionable finding from digging into the issue: I discovered that the three problematic disks all had the same UniqueID: 5000000000000001, indicating a signature collision. Which I found to be a simple enough fix changing the UID with the right guidance, but only for standalone drives. I'm concerned to do it to a disk that's part of a Storage Spaces array, for fear of creating bigger problems. What should I do here? I've seen quite a few people online having this problem with Storage Spaces and UniqueID in various configurations, most years ago, but no real answers that I've found.

Happy to share info. Can anyone help?

Answer 1

Hi,

Thank you for your posting!

Based on your descriptions, I would like to firstly explain to you that the healthy status you got from Get-PhysicalDisk does not necessarily mean everything is fine with your physical disks. This is because this command test limited parameters with regards to physial disks. Here is the article about Get-PhysicalDisk:

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/module/storage/get-physicaldisk?view=windowsserver2019-ps

If you want to further investigate whether your physical disks have issues or not, you need to go to this path: %SystemRoot%\System32\winevt for relevant event logs. Here is the logs that you can check:

https://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/11382.storage-spaces-frequently-asked-questions-faq.aspx#How_does_Storage_Spaces_respond_to_errors_on_physical_disks

Secondly, in regard to your signature collision issue, I suppose you can follow the guidance from this article:

https://www.thewindowsclub.com/disk-signature-collision-problem

Besides, I am wondering if this solution works for your storage space environment since I didn't find any limitations for standalone or storage space in my suggested workaround. So, please try first then if there is any error messages popping up please give me them if possible.

Thank you for your understanding! Just let you know that I am trying to work out your issue with my colleagues, I will post any progross on your issue on this blog for you.

Best regards
Joan

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Answer 2

Thanks so much for this, I will go through it in detail. In the meantime I'd like to share something I discovered today which, as promised, is even weirder yet.

TIL that when the drives are disconnected, Get-PhysicalDisk returns a proper UniqueID:

Connected:

DeviceID FriendlyName                   SerialNumber UniqueId
-------- ------------                   ------------ --------    
5        ADATA HV620s USB Device        E00503752B94 5000000000000001
6        ADATA HD330 SCSI Disk Device   310178331394 5000000000000001
2        ADATA HV620S                   92092B140B04 5000000000000001
0        ST320LT007-9ZV142              W0Q64FYA     5000C50053AB9995
1        WD My Passport 0820 USB Device WX21AA4HEHFN {eac05655-d53d-66d3-4cd2-78f5e4cbb80b}
4        ADATA HV620 USB Device         446170EE3045 {f86af0e1-f786-1691-c022-1a1061783e90}

Disconnected:

DeviceID FriendlyName                   SerialNumber  UniqueId
-------- ------------                   ------------  --------
         ADATA HV620s USB Device        DB98765432146 {4c856100-5d01-121e-4129-a75df4dbc0f8}
         ADATA HD330 SCSI Disk Device   DB98765432146 {a9b1a85c-c040-3304-e9ce-a70e8a95ba88}
         ADATA HV620S                   92092B140B04  {b8acb158-a5ce-11eb-a723-0023243d4c34}
0        ST320LT007-9ZV142              W0Q64FYA      5000C50053AB9995
1        WD My Passport 0820 USB Device WX21AA4HEHFN  {eac05655-d53d-66d3-4cd2-78f5e4cbb80b}
4        ADATA HV620 USB Device         446170EE3045  {f86af0e1-f786-1691-c022-1a1061783e90}

And the weirdest.... I got the idea, before I got into the suggested solutions, to put all 3 problematic drives back into the Sabrent to see what would happen, and this is what Get-PhysicalDisk spit out:

DeviceID FriendlyName                   SerialNumber  UniqueId
-------- ------------                   ------------  --------
3        ADATA HV620s USB Device        DB98765432146 {4c856100-5d01-121e-4129-a75df4dbc0f8}
4        ADATA HD330 SCSI Disk Device   DB98765432146 {a9b1a85c-c040-3304-e9ce-a70e8a95ba88}
5        SABRENT DISK02                 DB98765432146 {b8acb158-a5ce-11eb-a723-0023243d4c34}
0        ST320LT007-9ZV142              W0Q64FYA      5000C50053AB9995
2        WD My Passport 0820 USB Device WX21AA4HEHFN  {eac05655-d53d-66d3-4cd2-78f5e4cbb80b}
1        ADATA HV620 USB Device         446170EE3045  {f86af0e1-f786-1691-c022-1a1061783e90}

All drives assigned unique IDs (but now the same serial #s). And the hanging persists....... Indicating that the signature collisions, at least, were not causing the hanging?

Anyway, after tweaking a bit my log view, I was able to narrow down the exact errors related to this issue. The main one is:

"A timeout (30000 milliseconds) was reached while waiting for a transaction response from the WSearch service."

Which I'm getting repeatedly while the drives (any 1 of the 3 or all of them) are connected. I believe this may be the main problem hanging the apps? It happens even when only 1 is connected.

I also get:

"Disk 5 has the same disk identifiers as one or more disks connected to the system. Go to Microsoft's support website (http://support.microsoft.com) and search for KB2983588 to resolve the issue."

This is when I connect 2 or more of the problem drives.

It's also worth mentioning that the used space on the new drive has been steadily growing. I imagine the pool is rebuilding parity? No idea if it's relevant. Anyway, as for reassigning signatures, I was unable to do it using that article you generously offered, as both tools suggested are among those that hang indefinitely when these drives are connected.

And finally, I decided to go browsing the logs and found that contrary to what the windows update app states, there were several updates installed literally an hour before this all blew up. They are:

• KB4601554
• KB4589212
• KB4577586

I believe that I should uninstall these updates and see if this goes away. But I'd like to hear from you first, Jia. Thanks for your help.

Answer 3

Hi,

Thank you for your patience!

Firstly, I sum up several points about current situation and wonder if I am right:

1) Your problematic disks showed proper UniqueID after you put them back into the Sabrent, which meant that the signature collision was caused after your first try to resolve your issue.

2) After checking your eventlogs, the issue seems to be related with KB2983588 patch fix.

I think your action is reasonable, since based on your descriptions and eventlogs, the KB2983588 seems to be your root cause, it is likely to cause signature collision as well if you got the message "Disk 5 has the same disk identifiers as one or more disks connected to the system. Go to Microsoft's support website (http://support.microsoft.com) and search for KB2983588 to resolve the issue." So, I further investigated the issue with KB2983588 tag for you and found these articles:

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/getting-same-disk-identifiers/7ef3a931-5840-41c4-ad6b-b0eeb4b5c8af

https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/Azure/en-US/361a1545-36dd-4479-bd4d-ff9422ea0e4e/kb2983588?forum=WinPreview2014General

https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/3c69bf50-5201-4aa4-95c5-212086906ef7/disk-ltngt-has-the-same-disk-identifiers-as-one-or-more-disks-connected-to-the-system?forum=win10itprohardware

These blogs have the same issue with yours and KB2983588 seems to be an unavailable update version.

Thank you for your support again!

BR,
Joan

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Answer 4

Hi Joan,

Thanks for your response. I uninstalled the updates but there was no change in the issue, sadly. The more I dig into this the less I believe that signature collisions are causing the apps to hang the way they are. Every thing I'm reading online implies that these collision errors are simply an annoyance to log hounds, but not causing any real issues that can't be fixed by bringing a drive online through the disk manager. Add to that the fact that I've stopped getting the collision errors since putting the drives back into the dock, yet the hanging persists. It leaves me with just the timeout errors for Wsearch timing out.

A timeout (30000 milliseconds) was reached while waiting for a transaction response from the WSearch service.

And after some time it gives this error:

The following service has repeatedly stopped responding to service control requests: Windows Search

>

Contact the service vendor or the system administrator about whether to disable this service until the problem is identified.

>

You may have to restart the computer in safe mode before you can disable the service.

I've run the troubleshooter and it says that it "fixed the problem" but everything still hangs that were hanging before when the disks are connected.

EP

Answer 5

Hi,

Thank you for your reply!

Based on your new descriptions, your issue now is related to registry key for Windows Search, and I found a similar issue with yours, just replace COM+ Event System with Windows Search in the guidance that blog mentioned:

https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/e568f556-eeec-4e54-bc4d-f6673edb99e9/event-7000-event-7011-amp-event-7046-logged?forum=winserver8gen

Besides, the registry key for Windows Search is HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows Search.

You can also try to reset your registry key for Windows Search in Windows 10:

https://winaero.com/reset-search-windows-10/

(Please note: Information posted in the given link is hosted by a third party. Microsoft does not guarantee the accuracy and effectiveness of information.)

If you have already tried these methods (you mentioned that run the troubleshooter, not sure if the troubleshooter is the ways I just gave you), then your issue may need deeper and more andanced research which is beyond our Q&A scope. In this case, I would suggest you contact Microsoft Customer Support and Services where you would get a more satisfying explanation and solution to this issue. In addition, if the issue has been proved as system flaw, the consulting fee would be refund.

You may find phone number for your region accordingly from the link below.

Global Customer Service phone numbers:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/13948/global-customer-service-phone-numbers

Thank you for your understanding and support!

BR,
Joan

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