[SOLVED] HDD showing up in bios but not in Windows 10

[AdultCrash]

So my PC got a blue screen of death this morning and when I turned it back on, my data drives were missing. These are two partitions on one larger drive (2TB from memory) and are filled with all sorts of things, including games, PDFs, photos, videos MP3s etc.

I've done some looking online and I can see the SATA drive on the BIOS and I can see it in Device Manager if I 'show hidden devices' but it also says "Currently, this hardware device is not connected to the computer. (Code 45)" so I'm concerned that it's showing me this as I used to have it connected. The PC works as the system SSD is still ok but obviously there are a lot of broken links etc.

Any advice here? I am starting to suspect the disc is damaged so that it can be seen in the BIOS (so not a cable or whatever) but can't be read by Windows.

 

[plotinusredux]

What brand is the HD? Some manufacturers have free bootable utils (i.e., you never go into Windows) to check HD status that would tell you if the problem is the HD or windows. I used to use Partition Magic for that, but it appears to have been abandoned. It looks like the non-vendor specific ones all charge now.

Another long shot option would be trying to plug it into a different SATA port on the motherboard--unlikely to do anything, but worth trying.

 

[AdultCrash]

What brand is the HD? Some manufacturers have free bootable utils (i.e., you never go into Windows) to check HD status that would tell you if the problem is the HD or windows. I used to use Partition Magic for that, but it appears to have been abandoned. It looks like the non-vendor specific ones all charge now.

Another long shot option would be trying to plug it into a different SATA port on the motherboard--unlikely to do anything, but worth trying.

It’s a Seagate. I am with a friend now and have his external drive mount and the old drive will show up for a few seconds and then fall off. So it doesn’t seem to be the cables or anything else in the PC.

 

[plotinusredux]

The hard drive clearly has severe issues. If you don't need the data on it, I would just trash it. If you do need to recover data, the best chance would be:

https://www.seagate.com/support/downloads/ , download Seatools/Download for USB. Create the USB drive with it then boot from that drive.

https://www.seagate.com/support/kb/how-to-use-seatools-bootable-007843en/ has basic instructions, but basically you're going to see if SMART tripped, do a short test, then--and this may lose data, but if so it's data that's already lost--run the Fix All. I'd try Fast first, if that doesn't work then try Long. If it crashes during either of those, all I'd know to do is use a (very expensive) professional recovery service, but only if there was very important data on it.

If it does work, I'd copy off all the data you want off of it then replace it.

 

[AdultCrash]

Amazingly, my firend's drive cloning device worked. I've copied everything off it and plugged a new drive in and everythign seems to have worked - no data corrupted, just a failed drive. I'm astonished...