Partition Recovery™
An expert tool for recovering lost partitions
An expert tool for recovering lost partitions
Last updated: Apr 04, 2023

How to deal with disk offline signature collision issue?

In this article you will find out:

  • why does this error occur
  • how to get rid of an issue
  • how to protect your data

Are you ready? Let's read!

Why does this error occur

When Windows notices that two drives have the same signature, a signature collision hard drive often arises. The operating system uses the disk signature, or unique identifier (UID), which is stored as part of the MBR, to recognize and classify storage devices.

Windows versions 7, 8, 8.1, and 10 deactivate the second drive and prevent it from mounting until the driving conflict is addressed because Windows cannot let two drives with the same signature to operate concurrently. When a collision occurred in earlier versions of Windows (such as Windows Vista and XP), the disk signature was automatically altered.

This situation can occur in the following cases:

  • When starting a disk that was cloned along with its clone.
  • If you created a virtual hard disk from a physical one.
  • Use backup software that uses virtualization.

Thus, if you see the message disk is offline because it has a signature collision, then your computer can no longer boot correctly - you need to solve this problem.

How to get rid of an issue

You can use one of the following methods to get rid of the problem “the disk is offline because it has a signature collision with another disk that is online”.

1. Use Disk Management

You can open the Disk Management utility like this: Press Windows + R, type MSC in the search box, and press Enter.

Next, right-click the offline disk, select Online, and then Windows will assign a new disk signature to the disk.

2. Use Command Prompt

At the command prompt, type Diskpart and press Enter.

Next, enter: the list disk, this is necessary to display all the disks that are currently in the system.

Next, enter: select disk e (where "e" is the number of the problem disk).

Next, enter: Uniqueid disk to show the disk signature.

Next, enter: unique disk ID = NEW SIGNATURE, where NEW SIGNATURE is the new disk ID.

After each command, be sure to press the Enter key and, if you did everything correctly, Windows will bring the drive online and assign it a drive letter.

If something went wrong, DISKPART will give an error that says: "The specified identifier is not in the correct format, you need to enter the identifier in the correct format: in hexadecimal form for the MBR disk."

3. Use Automatic Repair

Insert the Windows installation DVD into your PC drive and completely shut down your computer.

Turn on your computer and press any key when you see "Press any key to boot from DVD ...".

Now you need to wait for the "Repair your computer" option and select it.

Now, select "Startup Repair" from the list of available recovery options to start scanning your installation for known issues and try to fix it if possible.

Protect your data with Partition Recovery!

The best professional software for all kinds of problems with any disks is DiskInternals Partition Recovery. This program supports the following file systems: FAT12, 32, ReFS, UFS, HFS, NTFS, ReiserFS, Reiser4, XFS, Ext2 / 3/4, etc. and can recover files from partitions of any size and number.

You can preview your files before recovery for free to ensure that your data can be recovered completely and efficiently. Only if you want to save the recovered files from the partition, you need to purchase a license for this product and enter the license key.

There is a free trial version of this program. Download it and you will see everything described above.

There is also a free disk imaging feature in case you damage your system while fixing an investigated error.

So:

  • 1. Download and install DiskInternals Partition Recovery as required.
  • 2. The Recovery Wizard will automatically ask you to select a drive or partition and file type.
  • 3. Select the recovery mode: full (recommended), fast, or reader. Click "Next" button and scanning will starts.
  • 4. Preview. After the scan is complete, you will see a list of recovered files and folders, which can be clearly seen.
  • 5. Next, you will be prompted to purchase a license: if it is important for you to save the recovered files in a different location, be sure to buy a license.

Be sure to use this app! It won't let you down!

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