Vanishing HDD Windows 10

[DrMoustachio]

Hi

This has been boggling my mind on whats happening and I could really use some help.

my computer setup:
4 HDD (1 of which is the SSD which is my C drive, the others are D,F, and G respectively)
i5 2500k, stock fan
4x2gb ram
GTX970
650w PSU corsair
Asrock Z68 Extreme3 Gen3 Mobo

Prior to issues appearing:
Everything was working fine. A friend got a new PC and gave me his CPU. I have the i5 2500k Sandybridge.. He gave me his i7 2600k. At the same time I purchased an Evo 212 for OC reasons.

At the time everything was working fine. Until I installed the i7 processor and the EVO 212 fan. (Note: I did not reinstall windows)

Issues began to appear:

Basically my F drive vanished from existence. By that it does not exist in disk management, it does not even exist in the bios. I went into the bios several times to see if it appears there, it doesn't even detect the hard drive..

Steps taken:
- I have tried several restarts.
- I have tried to use Disk Management to scan for it
- I have tried to use the Bios UEFI to see if it appears or not
- I have tried to switch the SATA plug locations
- I have tried to plug the HDD one by one to see if it appears.
- Touch all HDD to make sure they are spinning (they were)

Results:

All the above didn't work except when I reached the last attempt which is to plug the HDDs one by one. The F drive DID appear when it was only C drive and F drive. F drive at the time was fully accessible without any issues. I managed to go in, launch apps, everything was good. I added the remaining HDDs to see if it works. I noticed then that windows start up was much slower than it was before however everything launched at it was good. I spotted F drive in explorer. I clicked it to access it, and that is when the whole computer froze. Explorer crashed for a while, then returned to normal but with F drive vanishing out of existence..

I have no idea what is happening and wondering if anyone can come up with a trick to try or a solution to this mess.

 

[SuperSoph_WD]

Hey there, DrMoustachio!

Great job with the troubleshooting and thank you for the detailed explanation of your issue! You mentioned that you switched the SATA ports where the HDDs are connected to, but I'd also recommend you try swapping the SATA cable that is connecting the F drive to the motherboard as well. Hopefully, that would resolve the issue and make the drive pop up. It is possible that a damaged cable is the source of your issues, since the one-by-one HDD troubleshooting made the F drive pop up. Afterwards, attempt to power up the system will all the storage devices intact and see if any other HDD will fail to be detected.

Please make sure you backup your data somewhere off-site before proceeding with the troubleshooting, though.

Let me know how it goes!
Good luck!
SuperSoph_WD

 

[ArtPog]

A couple of things...

The first thing that comes to mind is that you may be dealing with a defective HDD (your "F" drive). It's not uncommon that a defective secondary HDD can cause all sorts of problems with a system including the obvious one of not itself being detected by the system or plagued by severe corruption.

But what's curious is that you indicate the problem(s) you describe arose *only* after you installed a new processor. At least I think that's what you are indicating although you report "my computer setup:" contains the i5 2500k CPU. I'm assuming that was the setup prior to installation of the i7 processor.

I don't suppose that after the problem surfaced you returned the system to its original configuration with the i5 2500k processor. Or did you?

In any event do test the "F:" disk with a HDD (I'm assuming it's a HDD) diagnostic program available from the disk's manufacturer. All the major manufacturers provide such a program for their disks.