[SOLVED] Hard drive completely missing from laptop

[meshoo]

Hey. So i just installed a fresh windows 10 home from my usb I did this before on my friends pc and had no issue, but now I tried it on my laptop and I deleted all the partition during the setup just like i did last time. However the only drive is showing is C where i installed windows and the my 1 TB hard drive is completely gone cant see it anywhere. I tried bios, disk management and nothing is there.

 

[Lafong]

Show us a picture of your Disk Management.

This laptop holds 2 different hard drives?

What is the size of the drive to which you installed Windows?

 

[dwd999]

Hey. So i just installed a fresh windows 10 home from my usb I did this before on my friends pc and had no issue, but now I tried it on my laptop and I deleted all the partition during the setup just like i did last time. However the only drive is showing is C where i installed windows and the my 1 TB hard drive is completely gone cant see it anywhere. I tried bios, disk management and nothing is there.

Do you mean that you had more than 1 drive in the laptop at the time you installed windows? The Windows installer really does not like that and if there was a second drive it may have overwritten the area which allows the second drive to be identified and accessed.

 

[meshoo]

Yes I had 2 an ssd and a HDD
Both were installed during the setup. It never made a problem when I did the same thing on my friends pc. If that’s the case what’s the solution for that if you know ? Thank you

 

[USAFRet]

Screencap of your Disk Management, please.
(upload your pic to imgur.com, post the link here)

 

[dwd999]

Yes I had 2 an ssd and a HDD
Both were installed during the setup. It never made a problem when I did the same thing on my friends pc. If that’s the case what’s the solution for that if you know ? Thank you

You could try software programs like Recuva to see if you can access your hdd and recover any files. But first you may want to try temporarily removing the hdd and doing a Windows reinstall on the ssd to see if that improves the situation. After reinstalling on the ssd you could see what it shows when you reconnect the hdd.

As an alternative you could try booting a usb containing a linux live distro (e.g. linuxmint mate) and see if that shows anything on the hdd.

 

[meshoo]

Screencap of your Disk Management, please.
(upload your pic to imgur.com, post the link here)

Imgur: The magic of the Internet
this is the screen shot from disk management

 

[meshoo]

You could try software programs like Recuva to see if you can access your hdd and recover any files. But first you may want to try temporarily removing the hdd and doing a Windows reinstall on the ssd to see if that improves the situation. After reinstalling on the ssd you could see what it shows when you reconnect the hdd.

As an alternative you could try booting a usb containing a linux live distro (e.g. linuxmint mate) and see if that shows anything on the hdd.

I tried that software it shows the other hdd i think but it saying it can read the file format

 

[meshoo]

Show us a picture of your Disk Management.

This laptop holds 2 different hard drives?

What is the size of the drive to which you installed Windows?

Imgur: The magic of the Internet
I installed in on the ssd which is 250gb on the windows setup menu I deleted the other ones like i did before. So the 2 hard disks were showing at the menu, but after i installed windows now its only showing one.

 

[Lafong]

Imgur: The magic of the Internet
I installed in on the ssd which is 250gb on the windows setup menu I deleted the other ones like i did before. So the 2 hard disks were showing at the menu, but after i installed windows now its only showing one.

That picture is about what I would expect with a single drive system....a 250 GB drive with a C of about 238, of which about 31 is occupied. With 2 much much smaller partitions put there by the Windows installer.

I have no idea if you have some other drive attached or not.

 

[dwd999]

I tried that software it shows the other hdd i think but it saying it can read the file format

I'm not really familiar with rescue software but at least if it shows the other hdd there may be hope. Perhaps you could research how to recover a deleted partition, directory or file allocation table and find a more suitable program. Or perhaps one of the other members who's a recovery expert can help with alternate software suggestions.

 

[meshoo]

That picture is about what I would expect with a single drive system....a 250 GB drive with a C of about 238, of which about 31 is occupied. With 2 much much smaller partitions put there by the Windows installer.

I have no idea if you have some other drive attached or not.

its 100% attached it was there. I just hit delete on all of the partitions when installing windows. Now its not showing anywhere the thing is its literally not accepting that there is a hard drive i tried so many different drivers and none of them seems to be working. I tried using windows PowerShell command to see the disk, but its not showing the hdd only the ssd. Do you think because i installed 64x instead of 32x this thing is happening? Im trying to reinstall windows 32x instead of 64 just to see if it changes anything

 

[USAFRet]

Your screencap is showing a single physical drive.

Either the HDD is somehow disconnected, or it is totally dead.
Or it was never there

 

[meshoo]

I'm not really familiar with rescue software but at least if it shows the other hdd there may be hope. Perhaps you could research how to recover a deleted partition, directory or file allocation table and find a more suitable program. Or perhaps one of the other members who's a recovery expert can help with alternate software suggestions.

Im trying everything. This is just really odd never been through it before. Thank you for trying to help

 

[USAFRet]

its 100% attached it was there. I just hit delete on all of the partitions when installing windows. Now its not showing anywhere the thing is its literally not accepting that there is a hard drive i tried so many different drivers and none of them seems to be working. I tried using windows PowerShell command to see the disk, but its not showing the hdd only the ssd. Do you think because i installed 64x instead of 32x this thing is happening? Im trying to reinstall windows 32x instead of 64 just to see if it changes anything

64bit vs 32bit has no influence on this.

 

[meshoo]

Your screencap is showing a single physical drive.

Either the HDD is somehow disconnected, or it is totally dead.
Or it was never there

You'll think im crazy, but im 100% sure it was there. I guess I can open it up and see for myself

 

[USAFRet]

You'll think im crazy, but im 100% sure it was there. I guess I can open it up and see for myself

Yes please.

 

[dwd999]

Im trying everything. This is just really odd never been through it before. Thank you for trying to help

I just remembered that the Minitool.com software suite includes free partition and data recovery apps. Perhaps one of them would help.

 

[meshoo]

Yes please.

https://imgur.com/a/KuUm0NV

View: https://imgur.com/a/KuUm0NV

So its not there, but how come it showed 1000gb on the windows menu could you explain that to me please ? also if you could tell me if i did anything wrong by deleting these partitions when installing new windows should i just hit format ?

 

[USAFRet]

So its not there, but how come it showed 1000gb on the windows menu could you explain that to me please ? also if you could tell me if i did anything wrong by deleting these partitions when installing new windows should i just hit format ?

If there is no physical drive, there is no physical drive.
There is nothing you did wrong, and no "software" can fix this.

"but how come it showed 1000gb on the windows menu "
No idea.

 

[Lafong]

https://imgur.com/a/KuUm0NV

View: https://imgur.com/a/KuUm0NV

also if you could tell me if i did anything wrong by deleting these partitions when installing new windows should i just hit format ?

If, I say IF, you want to do a clean install to Drive X, then yes you would choose to manually delete ALL partitions on Drive X early in the installation procedure when that choice is presented to you onscreen.

You wouldn't personally format anything. Windows installer will do what is required.

I have no idea about the rest of it, nor your intent, nor what you actually did.

 

[meshoo]

If there is no physical drive, there is no physical drive.
There is nothing you did wrong, and no "software" can fix this.

"but how come it showed 1000gb on the windows menu "
No idea.

I slept like around 4 am trying to figure it out. It showed the hdd saying its 1000gb and it was just gone. I feel a lot better now knowing I didn't do anything wrong. Last question from now on should i format the partitions when installing windows or i can just hit delete ? Thanks to everyone who took the time to reply to this thread.

 

[USAFRet]

I slept like around 4 am trying to figure it out. It showed the hdd saying its 1000gb and it was just gone. I feel a lot better now knowing I didn't do anything wrong. Last question from now on should i format the partitions when installing windows or i can just hit delete ? Thanks to everyone who took the time to reply to this thread.

A fresh install of Windows, just DELETE all existing partitions, and proceed.

How To - Windows 10 clean install tutorial

If you are looking for the Windows 11 Clean install tutorial, you can find that here: Windows 11 Clean install tutorial (Click here) Otherwise, welcome to the Windows 10 Clean install tutorial This tutorial is intended to help you, step by step, to perform a clean install of Windows...

forums.tomshardware.com

 

[Lafong]

I slept like around 4 am trying to figure it out. It showed the hdd saying its 1000gb and it was just gone. I feel a lot better now knowing I didn't do anything wrong. Last question from now on should i format the partitions when installing windows or i can just hit delete ? Thanks to everyone who took the time to reply to this thread.

Consult post 21.

 

[meshoo]

Consult post 21.

Just did. Thank you