[SOLVED] My hard drive has suddenly disappeared

[harry_m07]

Hi guys, For a few months I've been using a laptop that came with a 1TB Hard Drive and a 256GB SSD. Yesterday out of the blue, one of my drives disappeared from file explorer. I thought it was my SSD because all the files that were originally on my hard drive are still there on my ( C: ) drive. However, on closer inspection, I see that the drive that remains is a 256gb SSD drive. Somehow all my files that were on my hard drive were transferred over and then the hard drive "vanished". All my files that were originally on my SSD are nowhere to be seen.

My hard drive is showing in BIOS but not in Disk Management. It did, however, show up in disk management for a second this morning but disappeared again before I could do anything. At this point I was getting desperate, I'm not very computer savvy but I tried to download some drivers for my laptop. When I booted up Intel Rapid Storage Technology My hard drive is there but it says "SATA disk on Controller 0, Port 4: At-risk (SMART event)".

The hard drive is from Western Digital so I downloaded their Data Lifeguard Diagnostic but it can't seem to see the hard drive either.



I'd really appreciate any help I can get, The files that were previously on my SSD are very important to me and I would hate to have lost them.



TL: DR Hard drive showing in BIOS but not anywhere on windows. All files originally stored on hard drive have been moved to the SSD, All files originally on SSD have disappeared. The hard drive shows on Intel Rapid Storage Technology as "At risk"

 

[Ralston18]

How did you transfer the files?

Some third party utility or manually via the Command Prompt?

Did you use a "Move" command to move the files from the SSD to the HDD or did you use a "Copy" Command?

Be very careful as anything you do may cause further loss of data or make any possible recovery even more difficult.

 

[harry_m07]

How did you transfer the files?

Some third party utility or manually via the Command Prompt?

Did you use a "Move" command to move the files from the SSD to the HDD or did you use a "Copy" Command?

Be very careful as anything you do may cause further loss of data or make any possible recovery even more difficult.

I didnt do anything, the files moved on their own. I believe it happened over night but im not entirely sure. That's the problem, all the files on my hard drive moved on to the SSD and now i can't find the files that were on the SSD before.

 

[SamirD]

Remove both drives from the laptop and connect them to a drive dock and connect them to another computer. If they do not show up here, you may have lost the information and should immediately image the drives using clonezilla dd to preserve whatever can be read off of them.

 

[harry_m07]

Remove both drives from the laptop and connect them to a drive dock and connect them to another computer. If they do not show up here, you may have lost the information and should immediately image the drives using clonezilla dd to preserve whatever can be read off of them.

If I open the seal to access the hard drive I void my warranty. Should i send it back to the company I bought it from to see if they can salvage anything?

 

[SamirD]

If the drives are under warranty, I would talk to the manufacturer about how to proceed for data recovery.

 

[Third-Eye]

harry_m07
Stop using the system. Do not try to use it. Do not even turn it on. Do not remove any drives and hook them up to anther system. Anything you do, even just turning on the HDD, can wipe out data that may still be there.

Contact your system manufacturer for data recovering options. If the files were important, there are services that can recover your files if the manufacturer does not have an option for that. You may have trouble getting the files recovered right now with everything shut down around the world.

 

[harry_m07]

harry_m07
Stop using the system. Do not try to use it. Do not even turn it on. Do not remove any drives and hook them up to anther system. Anything you do, even just turning on the HDD, can wipe out data that may still be there.

Contact your system manufacturer for data recovering options. If the files were important, there are services that can recover your files if the manufacturer does not have an option for that. You may have trouble getting the files recovered right now with everything shut down around the world.

Okay, i was starting to think that i should stop using it. Thank you!

 

[Third-Eye]

Okay, i was starting to think that i should stop using it. Thank you!

If you can't get any data recovery services from the manufacturer, you probably have no other options but to open the laptop and replace the operating system drive to continue using the laptop. Depending on what type of SSD it is, a new good quality 250-256GB SSD is around $50-80. You can install Windows 10 on the new SSD and continue using the laptop hopefully without any issues. The product key should already be built into the motherboard or you can just sign in with your Microsoft account assuming you made one when you got the laptop.

If the SSD you have now is your OS drive, it's might be fine to keep using as storage or to clone to a new SSD. I'm only suggesting you get a new SSD in-case something happens when you start the laptop. Something like files disappearing from the current SSD, because of some program possibly updating directories and overwriting stored files. You're going to want to buy a new 1TB drive as well, because your current 1TB is probably about to completely fail and you don't want that happening when there is still a chance to you can use a service to recover any files that were not moved to the SSD.