Question Internal HDD suddenly not showing up in Explorer or Disk Management. Does show in BIOS and Device Manager.

[NickBen]

Hi everyone,

I did alot of research to try to solve this but most of the times it involves new hard drives that haven't been formatted properly yet. I can't find a solution for my specific case and I'm desperate.

This is my setup:

• a new SSD with a fresh Windows 10 install
• my old SSD with Windows 10 (not connected)
• an internal Toshiba storage drive, connected via SATA

This had been working well the past week. Yesterday I moved my drives around in my case to make it easier to switch between SSDs, which involved reconnecting all of my drives. I did this without the computer powered on. After doing this everything worked fine for a few hours. However when I turned my computer back on after taking a break suddenly the internal HDD is missing. It's still showing up in the BIOS and Device Manager, but nothing in Disk Manager or Explorer. I tried 3 different SATA cables and ports to no avail. It doesn't show up when I use my old SSD drive either. Nothing in Diskpart or safe mode either. Also enabled hot swapping in the BIOS.

This drive contains alot of work I did yesterday and I'd prefer not having to format it (though I wouldn't even know how at this point).

I'm at the end of my wits and desperate to solve this as I have a ton of work but can't do anything until this is solved., Does anyone have a clue what could be going on? Could the drive have really just randomly died? It's only a year old.

Motherboard is a Gigabyte Z270 Gaming .

Thanks in advance

I downloaded a tool called CrystalDiskInfo and it gives me the following info:

Disk Manager:

Device Manager:

 

[karenjoly]

The bios sees it , hmmm, I wonder if it will take a fresh windows install for windows to get on board ? But you will want to save files first so try to offload saved files from the hidden drive to an external drive/usb like this

How to save data:
On another PC, download the Windows 10 media creation tool and use it to make a win 10 installer on USB
change boot order so USB is first, hdd second
boot from installer
on screen after languages, choose repair this pc, not install.
choose troubleshoot
choose advanced
choose command prompt
type notepad and press enter
in notepad, select file>open
Use file explorer to copy any files you need to save to USB or hdd

Now Install windows making sure to disconnect the new ssd until all is good with the install.

 

[NickBen]

The bios sees it , hmmm, I wonder if it will take a fresh windows install for windows to get on board ? But you will want to save files first so try to offload saved files from the hidden drive to an external drive/usb like this

How to save data:
On another PC, download the Windows 10 media creation tool and use it to make a win 10 installer on USB
change boot order so USB is first, hdd second
boot from installer
on screen after languages, choose repair this pc, not install.
choose troubleshoot
choose advanced
choose command prompt
type notepad and press enter
in notepad, select file>open
Use file explorer to copy any files you need to save to USB or hdd

Now Install windows making sure to disconnect the new ssd until all is good with the install.

Thank you for your reply. I actually just did a new clean Windows install on my old SSD, with the problem HDD disconnected. However the problem stays the same. Out of curiosity I tried installing Windows on the HDD to see if it at least recognises it, but during install it's not detected. I also reseted, updated my BIOS.

Using EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard the drive is called "Lost Partition"and when I scan it I can see all my files.

 

[karenjoly]

Only conclusion then is that it is one dead drive.See if you can use notepad to rescue the files.

 

[NickBen]

Only conclusion then is that it is one dead drive.See if you can use notepad to rescue the files.

Possible, isn't it odd though that Crystal Disk Info says that the drive is healthy?

 

[Dark Lord of Tech]

Do you have a spare SATA cable to try?

 

[karenjoly]

New cables, alternative slots and an updated UEFI. These are the normal remedies for client-side causes of non enumeration. Recently, someone corrected a difficult to clone drive just by installing windows, hence my earlier suggestion.

Experience on this board suggests that the manufacturer's analysis app does not indicate whether windows enumerates the drive only that IF it does, the performance will be proportionate to the data record produced by the app. Back in the day we just dropped the drive from a decent height. That's my final suggestion !

 

[NickBen]

Do you have a spare SATA cable to try?

Yes, tried about 4 different ones as well as different slots.

New cables, alternative slots and an updated UEFI. These are the normal remedies for client-side causes of non enumeration. Recently, someone corrected a difficult to clone drive just by installing windows, hence my earlier suggestion.

Experience on this board suggests that the manufacturer's analysis app does not indicate whether windows enumerates the drive only that IF it does, the performance will be proportionate to the data record produced by the app. Back in the day we just dropped the drive from a decent height. That's my final suggestion !

Okay, thanks for your answer.

 

[dthomas5042]

try running cmd in admin mode
then type this cmd line
diskpart
select disk (# this has to be a number i.e disk 0) hit enter
then enter cmd line
clean

after you've hit clean, it will remove the protection from the disk you should be able to access the data after that, (50/50 chance of data deletion)
to format-
first put your windows boot usb in rest your computer and mash F12 then then windows 64 bit
after than click install now, enter your product key #
( if it asked if you want to upgrade click fresh install or the advance set up)
then find the drive in question (i.e disk 0, drive D:, PNY CS90012)
delete all partitions for that disk then follow this link to remove to remove any protective partition

How to Remove an EFI System Partition or GPT Protective Partition From a Drive in Windows

There are several reasons why you might end up with a protected partition you can't delete on a drive.

www.howtogeek.com