[SOLVED] D drive disappears and can't verify game files

[marson411]

Hello everyone. Lately I've been having a lot of trouble with my laptop. I have the Dell G7 7588.

• 8th Generation Intel Core i7-8750H at 2.20GHz Processor (9M Cache, up to 4.10 GHz)
• 16GB DDR4 at 2666MHz Memory, 512GB Solid State Drive, Windows 10 Pro (64-bit)
• 6GB GDDR5 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 with Max-Q Design, Intel UHD Graphics 630

Was working well for about a year, then started acting up. Since I've had it certain games tell me I need to update my graphics driver, but I try and it wont update and tells me no more updates are available. The computer has also done a lot of BIOS updates since I've had it.

The computer has 2 hard drivers. C, which is much smaller and has the system on it along with pictures, etc. and D drive is my 1tb storage where I put all the games. That drive suddenly started disappearing and only comes back if I restart the computer. I ended up formatting the drive, and that seemed to help, but now its acting up again. I tried formatting again last night, but the issue persisted.

I downloaded RDR2 from Steam and can't play. It will download and let me in the game to play, but if I travel from where I am in the game certain things wont load in and eventually it freezes up. If I try to verify game files, its always like 50-60GB of the game I have to download again, and then those won't verify after they download. If I do get back in the game the same issue happens again. Its like half the game just wont stick. It worked well when I first downloaded it for about a day. Then I would verify local files, download the 50gb again, play for about a day and do it all over again. Initially I had like 4 games on it, including RDR2, PUBG, WoW, and Nascar Heat 4, and everything worked great for about a year with no issues other than some games telling me to update my graphics driver, but there's none available that I could find. Just before I put RDR2 back on I had PUBG and WoW both playing well. When I put RDR2 back on it started again. Now I only have RDR2 on the drive, along with Steam and Rockstar. Would this be a faulty hard drive, or something simple like a graphics driver?

Sorry my post is long and all over the place. I'm not really sure how to describe it and I'm very ignorant when it comes technology. Any help would be much appreciated tho. Thanks.

 

[Frag Maniac]

Don't mean to be insulting, but this is a common mistake some laptop users make. Are you sure it's running on the 1060 and not the Intel integrated graphics?

Also, run a diagnostic on that 1TB drive, if it's a HDD, any slight drop of the laptop may have affected it. There are also free diagnostic tools for solid state drives if it's not a HDD.

As for BIOS updates and updates in general, I always set Windows to not install them automatically, so I can see what they are and decide for myself if I want/need them. Not all BIOS updates are necessary, and many, especially lately, can adversely affect performance. I DO however recommend updating to the latest build of W10, which is 20H2.

 

[marson411]

Thanks for the reply. I'm not sure if its on 1060, but I have seen Intel integrated graphics come up when I play some games so I assume its on that. I didn't know there was a difference lol. I did make a mistake getting this thing IMO, but unfortunately I had it too long before I realized I should have just got a desktop setup. For some reason I wanted portability, but I never take the computer anywhere.

I found a driver update on the GeForce experience that wasn't there before. I haven't looked in awhile, but I downloaded that and went through a few steps I found on YouTube, but that didn't work either.

After downloading the missing files, Steam gets stuck on verifying the download. It goes through the entire verification process, but when it completes, it pauses and if I click it to continue, it just starts the verification over again.

I went into properties and tools and checked the D drive, but it says there's no errors. A while back I did a SMART scan as well, but it also said there were no problems. I'm not sure if that's what you mean by diagnostic? The problem driver is HDD, but I haven't dropped it or jostled it. Still may need a new hard drive I guess.

 

[hang-the-9]

If the drive keeps disappearing, I would first reseat it, if that does not work, contact the laptop support if it's in warranty. Drive letter not showing up is not a game issue but a system issue.