Hardware Wii U asking to format external previously formatted HDD

[TheRealNGB]

After putting my Wii U hdd in a new case it is asking me to format it. Does anyone know how I can resolve this issue, I would prefer not to lose all my data and hours of time, from simply replacing the enclosure.

 

[IiZabrakiI]

I can't be sure as I have no way to test it. But if the new enclosure has a different controller as part of it. What the SATA and power of the hard drive plug into that changes that to the USB, it may be sensing that change and believing it is a different hard drive.
Does it work when plugged back into the old one ?
If so is it possible to move the old controller portion from one enclosure to the other?

 

[TheRealNGB]

I can't be sure as I have no way to test it. But if the new enclosure has a different controller as part of it. What the SATA and power of the hard drive plug into that changes that to the USB, it may be sensing that change and believing it is a different hard drive.
Does it work when plugged back into the old one ?
If so is it possible to move the old controller portion from one enclosure to the other?

I believe that is the case, unfortunately the controller will not fit in the new enclosure, it was a bare controller, hence the reason for wanting to use a new one with an enclosure, on the bright side the hard drive still works fine with the original controller, it's strange though that the Wii U is capable of recognizing different controllers I take it that it must log that information when creating the partition.

 

[bootmonster]

Different enclosures don't work.

Sorry

 

[Zonark]

The Wii U generate some kinda of "Married" Key for HDDs a new hdd will not work if you swap the internals since the controller is what the system recognizes and the hdd inside is formatted with the code as well in some way making it impossible to switch. You have to transfer all data using the wii u data transfer that's build into the system... sucks I know...

 

[TheRealNGB]

The Wii U generate some kinda of "Married" Key for HDDs a new hdd will not work if you swap the internals since the controller is what the system recognizes and the hdd inside is formatted with the code as well in some way making it impossible to switch. You have to transfer all data using the wii u data transfer that's build into the system... sucks I know...

Which would be fine if I wanted to use a different hdd, but I just wanted to use the same hdd with a different enclosure, which unfortunately does not seem possible. The main reason I wanted to do this was my only other hdd was smaller in size, I've just decided to deal with the current one in the mean time, until I can get a larger hard drive for the new enclosure to transfer the data to.

 

[Zonark]

Which would be fine if I wanted to use a different hdd, but I just wanted to use the same hdd with a different enclosure, which unfortunately does not seem possible. The main reason I wanted to do this was my only other hdd was smaller in size, I've just decided to deal with the current one in the mean time, until I can get a larger hard drive for the new enclosure to transfer the data to.

Yeah that's unfortunate I was hoping we would have a PC based drive cloning tool for the wii u by now