[SOLVED] Something has hijacked one of my drives

[Psycho Savager]

My OS runs off my C Drive. My D Drive is purely a back up for files - no programs are installed on it.

Yesterday my computer was behaving strangely - it wasn't booting at all at first. After a couple of hard resets, the computer ran a long disk check on the D Drive and repaired some files. Once I could get back into my OS, my D Drive would open very slowly and any file on it would take ages to open, or if it was a video, periodically stall while playing.

I decided to try and reformat it, but the format option in Disk Manager is greyed out. I even tried to do it from the command prompt and it was not allowing me, claiming that the system is running off this drive. It isn't.

I've unplugged the D Drive while I figure out what's wrong. Is this a virus or has something become corrupted?

 

[USAFRet]

1. Screencap of your Disk Management window, please.
2. Was this HDD D drive also connected when the OS was installed on the other drive?

 

[Psycho Savager]

I installed Windows on the C Drive some time in 2013 and updated to Windows 10 in 2016, long before I bought the D Drive.

However, I just ran systeminfo and it returned the date as "7th January 2021", so something very suspicious is going on.

 

[USAFRet]

Jan 7 2021 is almost certainly when your system got the most recent semi annual Windows 10 Update.

 

[Colif]

Try running this and see whats on D drive - https://windirstat.net/

Last 2 Windows version updates have used my HDD as location of the ESD files, I have a Win10 Upgrade folder with 8gb of files on drive I didn't say it could use. It must prefer secondary drives for it over C as i have plenty of space on C.

So win 10 probably sees those as system files, as they are the source.

 

[Psycho Savager]

I ran SequoiaView and all of the files on the D Drive are just my pictures and videos, except there is a paging file, which I wasn't expecting....

 

[Colif]

right click my computer
select properties
choose advanced system settings
under Performance, click Settings
choose advanced tab
Under virtual memory, click change...
now it should be marked as Automatically manage paging file size for both drives
bottom area should be greyed out
D should have None next to it.
If you untick Auto, C should say System managed next to it.

If page file is actually on D, this is how to move it to another disk, so i assume it also works for moving it back to C drive in reverse - https://winaero.com/how-to-move-page-file-in-windows-10-to-another-disk/

I have to guess D was attached to PC when you installed Win 10. It decided to use the extra empty space to its advantage. Gives you more space on C... this is why you only have 1 drive attached when installing win 10.