Question Why is my external hard drive no longer showing up?

[pnw8888]

I have a new Sabrent dual bay external hard drive docking solution with two new Barracuda 8TB hard drives. I created new simple volumes for both hard drives and copied all of my files over to one of the Barracuda drives last week- the second Barracuda drive is still empty and I plan to use it to mirror my original drive. In case it matters, the files currently live on my local hard drive in a Dropbox folder synced up with the cloud. I have a Dell Inspiron 5570 laptop.

I logged on a week later and only the second Barracuda (backup) drive shows up. I restarted, as well as powered on and off the hard drive docking station, but the first drive with all of the files I copied over still doesn't exist. Any ideas what happened here?

I can redo the process and copy everything over again, but I'm concerned why everything I did went away. Thanks.

 

[zinkles]

Your title says your drive doesn't show up, but your problem is your data isn't showing up?

Is the Simple Volume that your created for that drive still there? And if so, in disk manager does it show that the partition is empty?

 

[pnw8888]

The drive wasn't showing up, so upon opening "Disk Management" I could see the backup drive, but the main Barracuda drive no longer showed. I could see it labeled as Disk 2 in the lower section of the window, and it showed as unallocated. This is all new to me, but I believe that should answer your question.

 

[zinkles]

I could see it labeled as Disk 2 in the lower section of the window, and it showed as unallocated.

would you be able to attach a screenshot image of the situation? its a bit unclear what you are referring to :/

 

[SkyNetRising]

The drive wasn't showing up, so upon opening "Disk Management" I could see the backup drive, but the main Barracuda drive no longer showed. I could see it labeled as Disk 2 in the lower section of the window, and it showed as unallocated.

Can you show screenshot from Disk Management?
(upload to imgur.com and post link)

 

[pnw8888]

In order to keep it simple I didn't mention that I already moved ahead with creating a new simple volume and re-transferring the files... this post is more for me to understand and prevent the same issue from happening again. That said, my screenshot no longer reflects what it looked like originally.

You can see the Barracuda Primary (E), however prior to me creating a new simple volume it showed as Disk 2 unallocated, without the name that I'd given it last week. It also appeared to have full space, i.e., nothing on it. Unfortunately I should've taken a screenshot earlier, so hopefully this is still helpful. I had already re-mapped my Lightroom (photo editing) to the new Barracuda, so I wanted to get everything back in place sooner than later. However, to my surprise this morning none of the files were there.

https://imgur.com/a/JUK6H38

View: https://imgur.com/a/JUK6H38

 

[zinkles]

Seems like your drive was completely wiped after you had copied the files, to the extent, even the partition that was there was deleted too. Strange.

After you had transferred the files, did you check if the files were infact copied, or did you not check on that?

 

[pnw8888]

They were there, because I repointed my Lightroom catalog to the new drive and was able to successfully edit/export photos tied to that drive. I'm not really sure what happened. Once this transfer is complete I can upload a screenshot later today, and perhaps at least verify that it looks right.

 

[SkyNetRising]

this post is more for me to understand and prevent the same issue from happening again.

Make sure Fast startup is turned off in windows settings.
When you stop working with removable drives, you have to safely remove them.

If you turn off external drive dock or disconnect it without safely removing it first,
then you can get file system corruption or even partition table corruption.
(unallocated drive indicates damaged/corrupted partition table)

 

[pnw8888]

I'll check that out, thanks. I have the dock plugged into my laptop, but I occasionally unhook my laptop to carry it around the house for example. Is simply unplugging the hard drives in that situation considered unsafe?

I suppose regardless I'll watch some YouTube videos on the basics of working with external hard drives, thanks!

 

[SkyNetRising]

Is simply unplugging the hard drives in that situation considered unsafe?

Yes.

How to Eject USB or External Hard Drive in Windows 11

This guide shows how to safely remove USB or external hard drive in Windows 11, and what if the "Safely Remove Hardware" icon is missing.

www.windowsdigitals.com

 

[pnw8888]

More issues as of this evening... I re-moved all of my files to my Barracuda Primary drive last week. My Adobe Lightroom catalog lives on my C drive, but all of my photos live on my new Barracuda Primary drive. I've been editing photos the last few days without issue, and all folders are pointed to that Barracuda Primary drive location.

Fast forward to this evening, and all of a sudden it shows the underlying photos as missing. I restarted my laptop to see if that would resolve the issue and now my Barracuda Primary drive isn't even showing up... only the Barracuda backup that has nothing on it yet.

I'm 100% positive I didn't disconnect or delete anything - any guesses as to what is going on? This is going to be a big issue if it persists...

UPDATE - I've been researching online, and realized that a different external drive that I occasionally use (and did yesterday) has the same drive letter. Any chance that could've screwed things up? Everything worked fine without it connected though, so not sure that's the culprit.

Here is a screenshot of disk management - I haven't selected any options yet.

https://imgur.com/a/RbQWOL2

View: https://imgur.com/a/RbQWOL2

 

[pnw8888]

I did research before buying these, but otherwise I'm not too knowledgeable on storage options. If this setup is so finnicky then would a more standard hard drive (and not the dual setup I got) be more reliable?

https://imgur.com/a/sN6kBt2

View: https://imgur.com/a/sN6kBt2