[SOLVED] Partition keep disappearing after changing the MB

[Encall]

I changed my motherboard from B450 Tomahawk Max to X570 Aorus Elite. Everything went fine except all of my sata device all disappear. If I went to Disk Management , it said that all the sata disk need to be intialize before logical disk manager can access it.

I found a way to fix this problem by using testdisk to rewrite partition. However, after a restart or idle for a while it all disappear again.

I want to find solution because I don't want to reinstall my windows.

https://imgur.com/a/yfYCVBJ

View: https://imgur.com/a/yfYCVBJ

 

[fzabkar]

Another victim of AMD Ryzen:

https://forums.tomshardware.com/thr...nallocated-how-to-recover-their-data.3672150/

 

[Darkbreeze]

It would be HIGHLY recommended that you do a clean install of Windows. Changing motherboards to a new and different chipset is no different than changing platforms entirely, and any time you do that you would absolutely want to do a clean install. Sure, occasionally somebody gets lucky and doesn't have to do that, and gets away with it, but that's not the usual result. More often than not it either doesn't work at all or it works, but there are issues. That is what is happening here. It works, but there are issues.

You have to realize that with a different chipset, X570 rather than B450, you are talking about entirely different driver configurations and hardware, and registry settings that are inclined to cause problems because of them. Your new board will have entirely different storage controllers, different set of .inf files for the CPU and related onboard hardware, different network adapters, different audio chipset and codecs, all of which require entirely different drivers, and without doing a clean install what often happens is some of the old drivers hang in there for dear life and refuse to be removed or just continue to be loaded into memory along with any newly installed drivers and that can cause conflicts and other problems.

Storage controllers are the absolute worst victims when it comes to changing motherboards but not reinstalling Windows. As you've seen.

So, really it doesn't matter if you "want" to reinstall Windows or not. Chances are very good that the only way to fix this issue IS going to be by doing just that, and simply doing a refresh or upgrade won't likely cut it. Full clean install if nothing else works out.

How To - Windows 10 clean install tutorial

If you are looking for the Windows 11 Clean install tutorial, you can find that here: Windows 11 Clean install tutorial (Click here) Otherwise, welcome to the Windows 10 Clean install tutorial This tutorial is intended to help you, step by step, to perform a clean install of Windows...

forums.tomshardware.com

 

[Darkbreeze]

Another victim of AMD Ryzen:

https://forums.tomshardware.com/thr...nallocated-how-to-recover-their-data.3672150/

Try this first, but if it doesn't turn out to be the needed solution, you may need to reconsider what you're willing to do and might actually not have much choice anyhow.

Honestly, it's the first of heard of anything like that and I'm inclined to still believe that it's really only a work around, not an actual fix. An actual fix would be eliminating the environment that caused the problem in the first place.

 

[Encall]

Try this first, but if it doesn't turn out to be the needed solution, you may need to reconsider what you're willing to do and might actually not have much choice anyhow.

Honestly, it's the first of heard of anything like that and I'm inclined to still believe that it's really only a work around, not an actual fix. An actual fix would be eliminating the environment that caused the problem in the first place.

I read your answer and the solution is the same that I used. I think DMDE is just like testdisk, it only temporary not permament solution.

I think that I will do a clean install of Windows.

 

[fzabkar]

@Darkbreeze, you could have uncovered the root cause behind all these mysterious "AMD-Ryzen-unallocated-HDDs" threads.

 

[Darkbreeze]

I mean, honestly, that's the best course of action. Because at least THEN if the problem isn't fixed, you KNOW it's not a Windows OS issue, but is either some hardware fault or a bad AMD chipset driver release. In any case it will seriously narrow things down, or fix the problem, one of the two.

 

[Darkbreeze]

@Darkbreeze, you could have uncovered the root cause behind all these mysterious "AMD-Ryzen-unallocated-HDDs" threads.

I appreciate your snark.

 

[fzabkar]

I appreciate your snark.

I was paying you a compliment. This problem has baffled me in numerous threads in several storage forums, and I was never able to identify a root cause. The only common factors I saw were AMD Ryzen platforms running Windows 10. You appear to have solved the mystery for us, and I congratulate you. It never occurred to me that people were swapping motherboards without reinstalling Windows.

 

[Darkbreeze]

Ok. Thanks, I think. LOL.

 

[fzabkar]

Here is another one:

https://forums.tomshardware.com/thr...resetting-to-unallocated-please-help.3667696/

The solution:

"Deleted the sata drivers in device manager. Rebooted in safe mode so that system can reinstall the device and drivers. "

The OP built a new system, but it's not clear whether Windows was reinstalled.

 

[Darkbreeze]

Definitely seems related to the storage controller drivers for sure, at least from what I've seen. And this has been true, not just in THIS scenario, but for platform changes in general, for a really long time. So it makes sense.

 

[fzabkar]

But these cases are special in that it's only sectors 0 or 1 that appear to be targeted, primarily 0. Moreover, I see the same mysterious data pattern in sector 0 after the event. What's even more mysterious is that everything seems to work fine until the next reboot. It's not the sort of behaviour I would expect from the wrong driver.

 

[Encall]

I just finished reinstalling windows. The drive didn't show up after install and I use testdisk to write partition to them. I hope that will fix it.

 

[Darkbreeze]

But these cases are special in that it's only sectors 0 or 1 that appear to be targeted, primarily 0. Moreover, I see the same mysterious data pattern in sector 0 after the event. What's even more mysterious is that everything seems to work fine until the next reboot. It's not the sort of behaviour I would expect from the wrong driver.

You're right, that doesn't sound like driver behavior, but, it does sound like some problems I've seen in the past with corrupted registries or boot sectors. IDK, seems like if this was that widespread a cause would have been identified by now.