[SOLVED] I cannot assign drive letter to a partition so I can't use it.

[diapolical]

I have a 1 tb harddrive I use in my computer for storage, the OS is on a separate SSD.
There were 2 partitions on the storage drive, the smaller one was 90gb.
I noticed in partition software that there was a space of 3mb unallocated both before and after the 90gb partition.
Just to tidy things up in the partition software window I extended the 90gb partition by 6mb, so that there would be no unallocated space before and after it.

I did that operation in EaseUS Partition Master. The process went through but there was an error at the end, "update system information failed" .There was a partition created but there was no drive letter assigned. Windows Disk Mangement couldn't assign a drive letter either, the error was "The operation failed to complete because the disk mangement console view is not up to date etc" . I could delete the partition, so it appeared, in Disk Mangement, and then right clicking on the drive gave me the option of "new simple volume" produced the familiar error of "The operation failed to complete because the disk mangement console view is not up to date etc" though the partition seemed to have been created though no drive letter was assigned.
The partitions on my other drives in Disk Management are shown graphically with text reporting their size, their file system and the word HEALTHY but the problematic partition was listed only with its size and no mention of HEALTHY nor of the file system.

So I decided to clear the whole 1TB of data, and try to create a single partion on the hard drive to get the 90gb back. I deleted the larger partition successfully, creating unallocated space for the whole drive.
But now I can't create a useable partion on the hard drive at all. I am runing into all the same problems I had when I tried to recreate the 90gb partition.
EaseUS Partition Master Lists the partition as "GPT data partition", "Reserved Sectors-0", "First MFT Cluster-3", "usage 1%", "931.95GB". However the partition software command to "explore partition" does open up a window with the drive shown, just as it did when I was trying to get the 90GB partition working. Once again it seems there is a partition there but not one that windows can work with.

Using diskpart in powershell with admin rights can't assign a drive letter. The "list volume" command doesn't even show the partition.
"List disk" does show the disk as "disk 1" and I can select the disk, but from what I understand, diskpart assigns letters to partitions rather than disks.

I have recently upgraded to win 10 from 8.1. The partition resizing was all attempted in Windows 10. The system is EFI, boots from a reserved system partition on the SSD. The partitions are GPT. There was no loss of power or power surges or shutdowns while I was resizing the partitions.

So at the moment the drive is not usable.
I don't expect it is physically damaged, it had a very good health report in SMART so far in its life and it never gave me any trouble.
I think the problem may be that windows cannot mount the drive but I don't know how to overcome that.


How can I get this drive back into action?
Your expertise is apprectiated.

 

[SkyNetRising]

Can you show screenshot from Disk Management?
(upload to imgur.com and post link)

 

[diapolical]

there is a screenshot of the disk management console here

 

[SkyNetRising]

Clean the drive with diskpart.

Create single large partition and show screenshot from HDtune health.

 

[RolandJS]

"...space of 3mb unallocated both before and after..."
Tiny slivers of unallocated space are best ignored, partitions have to begin at certain places, others can do the geek-speak.

 

[diapolical]

"...space of 3mb unallocated both before and after..."
Tiny slivers of unallocated space are best ignored, partitions have to begin at certain places, others can do the geek-speak.

Is there some practical advice on how to overcome the problem in there somewhere?

 

[diapolical]

Create single large partition and show screenshot from HDtune health.

Thanks SkyNetRising

I ran the diskpart CLEAN command and it completed successfully.
I created a single large partition but it didn't assign a letter to the drive
(got error message in EaseUS Partition Master " Update system information failed! Updating system information... The operation is completed, and some operations failed.")

I will post the screenshots from HD tune later.

 

[diapolical]

This is a screenshot of the results of tests with HD Tune

 

[SkyNetRising]

Replace cables connecting to this hdd (both - power and data cables).
Watch SMART data values for Calibration retry and CRC errors.
If those increase after changing cables, then consider replacing the drive.

 

[diapolical]

Replace cables connecting to this hdd (both - power and data cables).
Watch SMART data values for Calibration retry and CRC errors.
If those increase after changing cables, then consider replacing the drive.

It's a laptop BTW
Weren't the tests positive?
I would rather not replace it. Is there no software that could correct the problem?

 

[USAFRet]

It's a laptop BTW
Weren't the tests positive?
I would rather not replace it. Is there no software that could correct the problem?

That looks like a physically failing drive.
Software can't fix that.

 

[SkyNetRising]

It's a laptop BTW
I would rather not replace it.

Then replace it.

 

[diapolical]

To be honest, I didn't have to ask experts just to be told to replace the drive, it was what I would have had to do if i hadn't been able to solve the problem. I feel I was being pressurized here into accepting that the drive was faulty and into replacing it, which is in the end not a solution at all, but what you do when there is no solution.
I wonder if ANY hard drive would pass all the benchmarks on those exhaustive HD Tune Pro tests?!

But I did solve the problem, accidentally it just happens and it wasn't a hardware problem at all.

It turns out that the windows driver was incorrect, Device Manger was listing the hard drive as an unknown device and when I updated the driver it was listed as a volume and instantly the 1TB hdd popped up in windows explorer with the 1TB partition intact and the drive letter assigned. I was looking at Device Manager for an unrelated issue when I noticed the Unknown Device listing.

I won't be replacing the drive, there isn't a bad sector on it and there has never been any data corruption. It's just fine.

I wonder if people here are being advised to replace their hardware far too readily, in the abscence of real problem solving. The thought makes me feel uncomfortable.

Perhaps eventually someone would have suggested that I check the driver, so I shouldn't be too aggrieved.

Anyway, hopefully now this post will be a useful resource for someone with the same problem, and save them the expense of replacing their hard drives.

 

[USAFRet]

One of the issues with things like this is there is only one person with eyes on the situation.
The rest of us out here can only go by what you report.

And to us (me, at least), it looked like a failing drive.

 

[SkyNetRising]

I feel I was being pressurized here into accepting that the drive was faulty and into replacing it, which is in the end not a solution at all, but what you do when there is no solution.

SMART screenshots provided clearly indicate, there's problem with your drive.
I'm just suggesting course of actions, I'd do in this situation.

Of course you can ignore it. It's your hardware and your data after all.

 

[RolandJS]

The reason I earlier mentioned ignoring tiny unallocated partitions is that often the effort to reclaim those slivers of unallocated areas is not straightforward, one has to sometimes jump through hoops with the disk partition software to reclaim unallocated areas and to re-size allocated and formatted partitions.

 

[fzabkar]

The SMART Write Error Rate attribute looks very bad. In fact it has hit the threshold.

The Calibration Retry Count appears to be related to the Load/Unload Retry Count. This suggests that the drive may be having occasional problems with its load/unload ramp.

The Read Error Rate attribute is reporting a high raw value, but I don't know how significant this is. In any case, no sectors have been reallocated or are pending reallocation.

I would keep an eye on the SMART attributes on a regular basis.