Spanned drives no longer appearing in Windows.....

[iCompute-doU]

I had two 2TB toshiba drives spanned in Windows (NOT a chipset RAID) as a simple spanned volume.

I moved my computer from one case to another (Phantom 410 to an H440 if that matters) and plugged everything in exactly the way it was before (SSD in SATA_0, HDD1 in SATA_1 and HDD2 in SATA_2)

Now, neither of the drives are even spinning up on start up. Neither of them shows up in the BIOS or disk management in Windows.

I could potentially believe i killed one drive accidentally, but it's impossible for me to have killed both. I've always been extra careful with all my parts, they were never dropped or anything. They came out of one case, into the drive trays of the other and that's where they won't work anymore.

Thoughts?

Setup:
CPU: i5-4690K OC'd to 4.6GHz
RAM: 16GB HyperX DDR3 1866
MOBO: MSI Z97 Gaming 7
SSD (Boot): Samsung 840 EVO 256GB
PSU: AX760
GPU: 2x MSI GTX 970 4GD5T OC Edition (In SLI)

 

[rhysiam]

Time to start swapping things to isolate your issue. Grab the power and SATA cables out of your SSD and pop them into one of the HDDs... boot into BIOS and see if it shows up. If it doesn't, then it really must the drive, because your SSD functioning tells you that the SATA port, SATA cable and power cable are all working fine.

Try taking the HDDs out of the case, checking nothings shorting anything, etc.

One potential with a new case is that you've got a rouge screw or some other metal nasty shorting out things on your motherboard which could (potentially) be taking out some of your SATA ports.

 

[iCompute-doU]

These are the steps I've tried:
-Swap all 3 SATA ports; SSD, HDD1 and HDD2
-Swap all 3 SATA cables
-Plug 1 HDD in at a time (It's a spanned drive, not striped so the data won't be fragmented)
-Plug both HDD's then one at a time into another working tower with known working cables

I've pretty much ruled out all physical failure/shorts other than the drives themselves.

Could it really be that both drives are dead? I've got a super tough time believing that.....

 

[rhysiam]

These are the steps I've tried:
-Swap all 3 SATA ports; SSD, HDD1 and HDD2
-Swap all 3 SATA cables
-Plug 1 HDD in at a time (It's a spanned drive, not striped so the data won't be fragmented)
-Plug both HDD's then one at a time into another working tower with known working cables

I've pretty much ruled out all physical failure/shorts other than the drives themselves.

Could it really be that both drives are dead? I've got a super tough time believing that.....

Wow, it seems like you've done absolutely everything you can. If a standard SATA HDD has failed to the extent that it won't even show up in a BIOS, and you've isolated the drive itself as the issue (which you have), then there are no further troubleshooting steps that I'm aware of beyond approaching a specialist data recovery company.

Perhaps someone else with more other ideas might pipe up, but from what you've described, those are two dead drives. That's super unlucky. Have you lost critical data?

 

[iCompute-doU]

Very critical data... Everything. Movies, music, reports, ideas, 3D models, footage.... I mean, it's not entirely life changing. More a major inconvenience than anything.

I've read on the web in some places a rumor of freezing the drives might get them a second chance at life...? Is there any truth to this rumor? Or am I just barking at ghosts at this point?

 

[rhysiam]

Very critical data... Everything. Movies, music, reports, ideas, 3D models, footage.... I mean, it's not entirely life changing. More a major inconvenience than anything.

I've read on the web in some places a rumour of freezing the drives might get them a second chance at life...? Is there any truth to this rumor? Or am I just barking at ghosts at this point?

Once upon a time I believe it worked, but not with anything vaguely resembling a modern drive: http://www.pcworld.com/article/3035017/storage/that-old-freezer-trick-to-save-a-hard-drive-doesnt-work-anymore.html

There are data recovery companies which would give you a pretty decent shot at getting at least some of the data back, but they're going to be cheap. Might be worth giving one or two a call though and seeing what they think/what they'll charge you.

 

[iCompute-doU]

Update; Both drives failed due to unknown reasons. Had to send both back to Toshiba for RMA'ing, where they replaced them with "new" refurbished drives. Needless to say I sent the drives back and they are sending me a cheque instead.

 

[rhysiam]

Update; Both drives failed due to unknown reasons. Had to send both back to Toshiba for RMA'ing, where they replaced them with "new" refurbished drives. Needless to say I sent the drives back and they are sending me a cheque instead.

Thanks for the update. That is really concerning and inexplicable. I suppose the money for the drives is a far cry from getting your data back.

 

[iCompute-doU]

Update; Both drives failed due to unknown reasons. Had to send both back to Toshiba for RMA'ing, where they replaced them with "new" refurbished drives. Needless to say I sent the drives back and they are sending me a cheque instead.

Thanks for the update. That is really concerning and inexplicable. I suppose the money for the drives is a far cry from getting your data back.

Might I add that their customer service was atrocious... I had to call three different numbers to find the right department for hard drive RMA's, once I did they claimed it was my fault and not covered, so I asked for a copy of the warranty. They never sent it, but decided to accept the drives as a "good favor to me" and promised I would receive two brand-new drives as replacements after the old ones were sent back. I got two used drives in opened moisture barrier packages, and they were delivered on a rainy day... It took me another three hours and three different "supervisors" to get a pre-paid waybill to return the drives and an agreement that they would send me a cheque instead.

It goes without question that any Toshiba-related product has been officially put on my "No-Buy!" list.