Question Drives not being seen in W10 after plugging in - weird problem!

[wizbit]

Hi everyone

I’ve got a strange problem that I’m struggling with. Firstly I should say it’s on my Mrs PC and she’s currently away with the machine atm so I’m trying to troubleshoot remotely.

1 SSD and 4 HDDs were removed from a perfectly working W10 computer on Friday.

They were stored safely and reconnected today, but they won’t detect properly.
I should note my Mrs knows what she’s doing with connecting components and has built her own computers, so I know they are in correctly. She’s also double checked connections.

Drive configuration:
SSD – BOOT
HDD 1 – WORK
HDD 2 – PHOTO
HDD 3 – VIDEO
HDD 4 – MUSIC

Since plugging everything back in not all the drives have been showing up and something has happened to WORK drive. The permissions seem to have changed and she’s shown these error messages:

d:\Location is not accessible

Access is denied

She could click on the drive properties from Windows explorer

The drive name was also appearing as PHOTO, even though it’s WORK


From Windows Explorer, drive showed as 0 bytes used space/free space
From Disk Management it CORRECTLY reported the drive size and free space
Drive was still named incorrectly


Clicking on PROPERTIES in DISK MANAGEMENT the error message “You must have read permissions to view the properties of this object” appears in the drive properties. Remember, this can’t be seen from Windows Explorer.


Another strange thing...using Photoshop, she can open a saved file that is saved as a shortcut in Photoshop, but can’t directly access the files in Explorer.

Using Recuva to see if the drive has completely corrupted, doesn’t show a lot of corruption and in the Recuva dialog window for selecting the drives/folders to scan it even shows some subfolders on the drive, which can’t be seen otherwise.

Having taken the WORK drive out and replugged the other drives in, now NONE of them show in Windows, except obviously the boot drive SSD.

She has checked in the BIOS, all drives appear and are named as normal, it’s when it gets into Windows that the problems start.

We are both really stumped with this and can't figure out what's happening or why.
If it was a bizarre Windows screw up, as a last resort, we'd just take the drives out, format the SSD and reinstall Windows, but we are concerned that if permissions have been altered on the HDDs we may not be able to access them from another machine.

What to do?


Thanks in advance for any advice!

EDIT Specs - with more to be updated later

CPU: Intel i7 3770K
Motherboard: Gigabyte Z77-D3H
Ram: 32GB
SSD/HDD: Crucial SSD, WD HDD x4
GPU: AMD R9 290
PSU: Enermax Modu 82+
Chassis: Will confirm later
OS: Win 10 Home 64bit

BIOS drivers are up to date.

PSU has been tested with just supplying 1 HDD power and the SSD boot, powers on fine, but problems persist in Windows.

 

[Lutfij]

We will need a little more information. Can you please pass on the specs to your troubled system like so:
CPU:
Motherboard:
Ram:
SSD/HDD:
GPU:
PSU:
Chassis:
OS:

Make sure that the system is on the latest BIOS update(if there are any pending) then see if you can access the drives on a donor system. If you can, then the issue is with the OS for your particular system, unless ofc the PSU is acting up and incapable of delivering power to all drives after OS GUI.

 

[wizbit]

Thanks for the reply Lutfij.

I'll have to check a couple of the specs with her (such as PSU make/spec) when she's back at the computer later but I'll update what I can in the OP now.

 

[wizbit]

Just to update this thread with the latest info.

The PSU is an Enermax, it's been tested with different connections and cables to no effect, so it's not that.

The problem seems to be from something within Windows that has screwed up the permissions, or maybe a motherboard fault that's manifested after taking the cables out and plugging them in again...those the cables were only removed from the drive, not the motherboard.