Problem with drives

[troyskee]

I have a one year old MSI gaming laptop that I bought new. It came with a 1 TB HDD and three 256 GB SSD's running in Raid. i7 Quad Core with Nvidia GTX 970, 16GB ram.

It unfortunately was thrown on the ground by my little brother a few months ago, and was pretty messed up, wouldn't turn on and the screen was almost broken off, made weird noises when I tried to turn it on... But I had an extra warranty that covered accidental damage. I Sent computer to them, and got it back 2 months later. They only replaced the LCD screen and the outer pieces and bezels of the laptop. They replaced these red pieces with grey ones, except for the very dented red piece that connects base of laptop to screen :/

Everything was fine for a few weeks but then a windows 10 update got stuck. After 10+ hours of the same screen, I forced my computer to shut down. Turned back on and found that I needed to repair my drives aka lose all my files and start from a new windows 10. I did this, and downloaded all my games and drivers again.

Then a few weeks later I get "cannot boot your PC, boot files missing". No option to repair, so I opened up computer and found that a data pin on my HDD was bent, and the plastic backing to the HDD data pins was broken off. I ordered an almost identical replacement, same specs. I created media installation for Windows 10 on a flash drive, and (i thought) I installed windows on the three SSD's. I swear the drive I clicked on said 700 something GB's, so i assumed it was the 3 SSD's. I read online to put windows 10 and my most used games on the SSD's, and just use HDD for pictures/videos.

Now only one drive is showing up, OS_Install (C with 550GB free of 713 GB. http://imgur.com/T2RJbK0
In the device manager under Disk Drives I see my new HDD and 'Intel Raid 0 Volume', but no SSD's http://imgur.com/T9vOvIk

When I open Manage Storage Spaces, Storage Pool shows I have used 256MB of 930GB, and only shows my HDD, 'attached via Raid'. http://imgur.com/U9Mc23L

In Disk Management, I can only see OS_Install(c with 550/713GB free. http://imgur.com/pfTx8JG

1. Is my computer recognizing my new HDD and old SSD's?

2. I'm guessing OS_(C is my SSD's, why is so much space taken up on them and why don't they show up in devices?

3. For performance, what drive should I have my games and windows 10 on? HDD or SSD's?

4. Would it be smart to delete everything from all drives and start from complete scratch again?

 

[Ralston18]

Per your description of events it is very likely that the laptop sustained more damage than realized or was repaired. Maybe some weaken connections or components that are now failing after those extra few weeks of working. Or the original repairs were not up to par or some issue was borderline in need of repair. So the repair shop just skipped it.

For performance your OS should be on an SSD. Along with what ever games and applications you use.

Are your sure that there are four physical drives (3 SSDs, 1 HDD) installed in that laptop?

Simplify. Go back to just one SSD (with the OS) and see if you can get the laptop back to normal. Then start adding back the other remaining drives one by one. Run any drive diagnostic software you have as you go along. Plan it out and be methodical. Allow test time in between each drive installation.

Starting over from scratch is probably the best approach. But do so carefully and do not leave anything unfixed or incomplete behind as you go along. Keep notes and double check all configurations and settings.

The HDD (with moving parts) is likely where problems will start showing up. Who knows what may have happened to it internally when the laptop was thrown.

What you need to do is to ensure that there are no remaining physical damage problems causing the drive issues. Or determine with some certainty that there are still such problems remaining.