[SOLVED] win 10 randomly sets disks unallocated. help!

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pduke7

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Hi all!
What happens here is really really really bad, If anyone can, please help
I will try to explain as detailed as i can.

Background
I had an i5 760 win 10 installation on a Samsung 860 SSD with 2 WDs HDD as internal (1 black and 1 blue) and 3 my books as external.
Old System
GA P55-USB3
i5 760
win 10 on Samsung 860 SSD
2 WDs HDD (internal)
3 my books ( external)

A friend gave me a E5-2670 and bought an ASUS X79 Sabertooth at about 120, so i decided to proceed with the upgrade.
New System
Asus X79 sabertooth
E5-2670
win 10 (same installation / no format)

I didn't format the SSD and tried to boot straight forward since many say that win10 does not need fresh install anymore for mobo replace.
It took about 10 minutes and everything was setup and working perfectly.
My only problem was that bootloader was in legacy since my previous GA-P55-usb3 didn’t support UEFI. I enabled both legacy and UEFI in bios and got it working.
For about 2 weeks everything was great except of some suspicious random disconnects from the external drives.
The disconnects started to be a bit annoying, plus i had a thing with the bandwidth of my external audio card (an antelope Orion 32), forgot to say this is a DAW station, via USB. So i started suspecting a problem with the USB hardware or driver.
Fixed it by connecting Orion in a USB expansion connected to the motherboard extra ports.
One drive continued to have random disconnects so i decided to change all 3 externals to internals …

and then … ALL <Mod Edit> BROKE LOOSE!!!

Main problem
Disassembled one MyBook, got the WD Green and placed it internal. booted, All Good.
Disassembled the other two MyBooks and as soon as i booted up with them as internal, windows saw them as Unallocated. ...
I am skipping the panic and the despair, I restored them with easeus partition recover after many many hours of search.
The next day as i bootup in the morning, my internal WD Black goes Unallocated. PC takes about 5 minutes to boot. The disk is making clicking sounds. I am panicked.
I manage to read it with easeus deep scan. I go and buy a new 4TB WD Blue. and after several hours i restored nearly everything on the blue.

Forgot to say, for all restore procedures i am using an old laptop with win10 and an external double HDD bay. I copy to a smaller 500GB and i move the files with this one to the 4TB in my main rig.

Next morning, i boot up and … BOOM! the new WD Blue goes Unallocated. No partitions to restore … Only solution deep scan. I managed to save the data once more. 



Side story, one of the WD Green externals, after going unallocated and saved, it went unallocated again 2 days after!! As an external this time

Could somebody please give an advise? What is this craziness?
Could it be the motherboard ?
the SATA cables?
The PSU?
The win 10 installation?
Every day i am terrified to open the PC and i always have an HDD beeing restored in the back on my laptop.
The worst of all is that i can't find a pattern in this behaviour.
My next steps are to install win 10 in a new SSD and see if same things are happening.
But still what can cause such behaviour?it is the most frightening situation i ever came across with a PC.
Thank you all advance for you patience.
cheers :)
 
Solution
It appears that LBA 2 has been cleared. Very strange.

R-click the New Volume partition and select "Insert the Partition (Undelete)". Then Apply Changes and reboot.

If you don't see that option, then double-click the partition and expand the Root. Do you see your file/folder structure?

pduke7

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Thank you guys, so i should not look further away than the win10 installation? I suppose the randomness of the situation points to ... windows...
 
DMDE will probably be able to restore your unallocated partitions in a matter of seconds with a few clicks. No need for a "deep scan" or a second HDD.

I saw this behaviour in another thread not too long ago. The OP did not say if the problem was eventually resolved.
 

pduke7

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I finally started with a fresh windows installation. so far so good. I will report back.

DMDE will probably be able to restore your unallocated partitions in a matter of seconds with a few clicks. No need for a "deep scan" or a second HDD.

I saw this behaviour in another thread not too long ago. The OP did not say if the problem was eventually resolved.
i can't seem to find this feature. It always goes to scan for hours before giving me any option for restore the partition. On the other hand this is a quite complicated little program.
 

pduke7

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this this should do.
5yy6Xsd.png

qA6Mt7s.jpg
 
It appears that LBA 2 has been cleared. Very strange.

R-click the New Volume partition and select "Insert the Partition (Undelete)". Then Apply Changes and reboot.

If you don't see that option, then double-click the partition and expand the Root. Do you see your file/folder structure?
 
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Solution

pduke7

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Sep 7, 2018
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It appears that LBA 2 has been cleared. Very strange.

R-click the New Volume partition and select "Insert the Partition (Undelete)". Then Apply Changes and reboot.

If you don't see that option, then double-click the partition and expand the Root. Do you see your file/folder structure?
Two clicks, one reboot and tadaaa! everything back to normal. all data there. (it still shows 14ΜΒ unallocated, should i be bothered?)
Thanks a million man!
 

pduke7

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In this new win10 installation i just tried to connect one of my external - MyBook WD Caviar Green WD30EZRX - as internal. It was shown as unallocated. I run DMDE and tried the suggestion above. But the "Insert the Partition (Undelete)" option was greyed out. So i put it back in the external case, run DMDE once more, still not working. Finally after Insert the Partition (Undelete), i checked the MBR option and then it worked. Disk shows fine.
Should this be normal behavior(externals are meant to be externals if not partitioned as internals) or fear is coming to town again and "unallocation" will come knocking once more ...?
😨😨😨
 
The 14MB unallocated area corresponds to the space between sectors 34 and 32767. I don't know why this space exists, but it's nothing to be concerned about.

Some external drives are encrypted by the USB-SATA bridge PCB in the enclosure. When you connect such a drive as an internal HDD, the data appear as gibberish. If you then accept Windows' invitation to initialise the drive, you overwrite the partition information. Now when you return the drive to its enclosure, this overwritten info is "decrypted" by the bridge and Windows sees it as gibberish. DMDE restores the partition information in MBR mode. This is because these drives are typically configured with a sector size of 4KB, which in turn means that they can be partitioned in MBR mode to support legacy OS-es such as Win XP.
 

pduke7

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With external drives you have to remove them safely first before disconnecting physically.
I know, i always do.
The 14MB unallocated area corresponds to the space between sectors 34 and 32767. I don't know why this space exists, but it's nothing to be concerned about.

Some external drives are encrypted by the USB-SATA bridge PCB in the enclosure. When you connect such a drive as an internal HDD, the data appear as gibberish. If you then accept Windows' invitation to initialise the drive, you overwrite the partition information. Now when you return the drive to its enclosure, this overwritten info is "decrypted" by the bridge and Windows sees it as gibberish. DMDE restores the partition information in MBR mode. This is because these drives are typically configured with a sector size of 4KB, which in turn means that they can be partitioned in MBR mode to support legacy OS-es such as Win XP.
Well it wasn't gibberish, just unallocated. if there is any difference.
Well i backed it up and format it as internal so i beleive this will keep it working.
It appears that LBA 2 has been cleared. Very strange.
Forgot about this. Could the motherboard be responsible for such action?
 
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