[SOLVED] HDD Missing after fresh windows 10 LTSB install

[tyler.n.rees]

Ok, I can't seem to figure this one out so I'll try to include as many pictures and details of what I've tried as I can. Yesterday I did a fresh install of windows 10 LTSB 2016 (First time trying LTSB, and I love it besides this issue). Everything went just fine except my second storage HDD didn't show up in the file explorer. This HDD is a 4TB HP MB4000GDUPB that was working just fine in my previous installation and has quite a few files on it that I'd rather not delete.

So first I checked device manager and saw that the drive was showing up under disk drives

device status shows up as working properly

and trying to populate volumes yields this result.

The HDD also shows up in BIOS on my MSI z97 Gaming 5 motherboard's board explorer as connected to one of the SATA 6gb/s ports just like all my other drives. I made sure to update drivers for the HDD through device manager, install all updates for windows 10 LTSB,

and went and installed the newest drivers for my motherboard. One of these drivers was "intel rapid storage technology" So I opened this application after it was installed and it also showed the drive, but even if I run the program as administrator it doesn't really allow me to alter anything with any of the drives.

So the key places the HDD doesn't show up is of course the file explorer

, but also disk management

, administrator cmd diskpart list disk

, and control panel storage spaces.

I'm not really sure where else I can check to try to configure the drive, get the data off of it, and get it to show up properly.

If anyone has some more troubleshooting ideas for me I welcome them. Hopefully its just something super simple I glossed over.

Sorry, I'm new to actually making posts on this forum. I believe I got the pictures figured out but i'll keep an imgur album here just in case. https://imgur.com/a/8MDg4y6

 

[COLGeek]

Where did you get your installation media for Win 10 LTSB? Why that version?

 

[tyler.n.rees]

Where did you get your installation media for Win 10 LTSB? Why that version?

Friend of mine recommended LTSB to me a few months ago as he knew I wasn't a fan of the extra bloat like cortana, onedrive, windows store, etc so I wanted to give it a try the next time I did a fresh install. The ISO is available strait from microsoft under "Windows 10 Enterprise". If I could get this drive to work properly, I would highly recommend it from my experience with it so far.

 

[COLGeek]

You know, that eval version is only for 90 days, right? What are you going to do then?

What OS were you using prior to using LTSB?

 

[COLGeek]

BTW, did you get the chipset drivers from Intel and install them, or just use the Win 10 installed drivers?

 

[tyler.n.rees]

BTW, did you get the chipset drivers from Intel and install them, or just use the Win 10 installed drivers?

I installed chipset drivers from here https://us.msi.com/Motherboard/support/Z97-GAMING-5#down-driver&Win10%2064 and I can't remember what version of windows 10 I used before exactly. It was just a normal version of windows 10 that got the big creator's update and all that. I'm not really worried about 90 days from now, I just want to get this drive working.

 

[COLGeek]

On your previous install, was the missing HDD part of a RAID config or spanned volume?

 

[tyler.n.rees]

On your previous install, was the missing HDD part of a RAID config or spanned volume?

I actually got the drive within the last few months, I don't remember doing anything special with it besides opening it up in disk management and assigning it a volume and letter. I definitely didn't setup RAID, and it was set up as a separate drive with its own volume. I actually wanted to make it a spanned volume with my 2 tb storage drive with this fresh install, that is when I figured out it wasn't even showing up in disk management.

 

[COLGeek]

I have shared this thread with the moderation team to see if anyone has any ideas.

 

[tyler.n.rees]

I have shared this thread with the moderation team to see if anyone has any ideas.

Thank you for your efforts, look forward to seeing what people have to say.

 

[Onus]

Did you make ANY hardware changes, even something as simple as moving a SATA cable to another port? I am wondering if you have a resource conflict on your motherboard, such as would occur if you installed a M.2 SSD (I know you don't have one now) which disables one or two SATA ports. If your motherboard does that, see if that drive is plugged into one of the "shared" ports and move it to a non-shared port.

 

[Onus]

It is also possible that, purely by coincidence, the drive cable failed. Try another one if you have it, possibly borrowed from your optical drive (if you have one). At the least, try unplugging and reseating the SATA cable on that drive.

 

[tyler.n.rees]

Did you make ANY hardware changes, even something as simple as moving a SATA cable to another port? I am wondering if you have a resource conflict on your motherboard, such as would occur if you installed a M.2 SSD (I know you don't have one now) which disables one or two SATA ports. If your motherboard does that, see if that drive is plugged into one of the "shared" ports and move it to a non-shared port.

I actually noticed this on the board explorer when I checked. It was plugged into a port that mentioned M2 SATA when I hovered over it. This was the port it was originally plugged in to on the previous install. I actually unplugged it from that port and put it in the port right above it after I started having these issues as part of my initial troubleshooting. It now shows up as plugged in to a normal SATA 6gb/s port like my other drives.

Now that you mention this though I might just try unplugging my working storage drive temporarily and using that port to see if it makes a difference.

*Edit*: So I switched the SATA cables on the working storage HDD and the problem HDD on the HDD themselves so the cables actually remained in the same ports on the motherboard. Booted up and I'm having the same results as before, only now the working HDD shows up as Disk 3 in Disk management and cmd diskpart instead of Disk 2. So just to clarify I now have my working 2TB HDD using the same cable and port that the problem HDD was using before and all my results are the same.

 

[Onus]

Since it worked before, presumably it isn't a format issue. Is the drive GPT, or MBR? An external USB3.0 dock might be something else to try to see if the drive is readable.
So it's not a port or cable issue; could the drive have been damaged in any other way? What is the brand and model (not just wattage) of your PSU? Is it plugged into a surge suppressor?

 

[misar]

As you experienced this problem immediately after a fresh Windows install and without (I assume) touching the hardware it would seem to be a Windows/driver issue.

Why not try another fresh install but with a consumer Windows version and see what happens with the drive?

An afterthought - if I were installing an evaluation copy like this I would first have kept an image of my system drive so I could restore if something went wrong.

 

[tyler.n.rees]

Since it worked before, presumably it isn't a format issue. Is the drive GPT, or MBR? An external USB3.0 dock might be something else to try to see if the drive is readable.
So it's not a port or cable issue; could the drive have been damaged in any other way? What is the brand and model (not just wattage) of your PSU? Is it plugged into a surge suppressor?

I'm not actually sure if it is GPT or MBR, and I'm not sure how to find that information without the disk management or cmd diskpart detecting it. My PSU is a 1000W EVGA supernova G2 and my whole setup is running off of an active PFC UPS system with surge suppression built in. The UPS is a cyberpower PR2200LCD https://www.cyberpowersystems.com/product/ups/pr2200lcd/ for those curious.

I don't have a USB 3.0 dock available but I think what I will do is order a few more SATA cables as I seem to be out of them and I'll hook up a second drive. I actually bought two of these drives, these HP MB4000GDUPB drives, but only installed the one once I realized I only had one spare SATA cable. I guess I forgot about the other one as I didn't really need the additional storage yet. If I can get the other one plugged in and working I might be able to get information about the one that isn't working.

 

[popatim]

Can you try disabling secure boot and enable CSM in your bios?