Question Vanishing HDDs after crash

[klippenwald]

System:

Win 10 Pro 64 bit, all up to date
Gigabyte G1 Gaming X99 SLI Phoenix
500GB SSD (Primary/boot)
2 X 3 TB WD HDDs RAID 1
1 x 1 TB Seagate HDD
I7 CPU

Problem:

Playing a game and the system BSOD crashed due to Video TDM problems. Known issue with my system, it uses a Thermaltake PCIe riser cable to the video card, the case manufacturer (Thermaltake) ribbon cables are known to be sketchy and cause problems, I just haven't gotten around to buying a replacement. Upon reboot the system hung on the OS loading screen. After a couple resets I got the expected Win 10 options screen due to multiple resets for safe mode, etc. Picked safe mode, loaded fine, so shut down and booted normally. Next boot - all good except my RAID volume is no longer in RAID and now 2 separate HDDs. Still readable, just essentially went from RAID 1 letter "D:" drive to mounting as "D:" and "E:" drive. Well, crap - I'd had this happen once before, just go back into BIOS and re-do the RAID setup and then the Windows INTEL RST software would rebuild/check the volume on next boot and all would be good. Did that and windows hung again. reset, reset, reset, back to safe mode Google a bunch of solutions and none work, try setting SATA BIOS to AHCI and now the computer boots fine, but windows doesn't see the WD's in the Disk manager, even though they are present and visible under Disk Drives in the Device Manager. So Win 10 does see them, it just won't mount them. Figure it's the RST driver got corrupted, so I uninstall that (whole 'nuther problem, couldn't uninstall it so I learned how to regedit windows to add/remove software in safe mode) and now the computer boots fine with BIOS in AHCI or RAID, but my 2 WD drives are still not mounting in Disk Managment. I have verified automount in Diskpart is in fact enabled.

How the heck do I get these disks to mount? At this point I'd be happy if I could just get them up and running in AHCI mode to get the data off and create a windows mirrored volume, this BIOS RAID is too unstable.

TL;DR: BSOD, RAID 1 volume failed to separate disks, tried various solutions. Drives visible in Device manager, but will not mount. How to mount drives?

Disk Managment

Hardware Managment

 

[onespeedbiker]

First do the disks show up in File Explorer? You may want to double check Disk Manager. For some reason the windows disk manager will have a couple of gaps in the lower pane between disks with a driver letter and those without, so you need to scroll down more than usual to see them.

 

[klippenwald]

They did not appear in FE, only in device manager.

Ok, I ended up giving up. I think its a combination of errors, on of which is the motherboard's awful firmware RAID solution. Completely corrupted the RAID whateveritis it built on the drives. MBR? I don't know. I tried literally everything to get the drives to pair back up - reinstallation of drivers, newer drivers, older drivers, different BIOS settings...nothing worked. I even ended up having to reinstall windows because windows absolutely refused to let me install or uninstall the Intel RST drivers. Errors after errors. I even had to install a linux partition because even after a fresh windows install one of the former RAID pair showed up as "unavailable". Squarely a windows problem, loaded a linux partition app and re-did the disk partitions and had the drive back right away. Damn frustrating to have an OS refuse to let you do something for literally no discernable reason, even after googling tons of solutions.

Pretty much a catastrophe - but luckily all my valuable data was backed up and I only had to slog through reinstallation of scores of programs and dig up licenses for re-entry.

Is it solved? yeah...kinda. With a scorched earth fix. Wiped out all partitions, started from scratch, dual-boot windows/Debian, used Debian to fix the stubborn HDD, Set BIOS SATA to AHCI, and made a Windows Mirrored Volume instead of a BIOS RAID setup, because RAID breaking 3 times was enough.