Bizarre disk detection issue

Silent Bob · 17 Aug 2021 at 21:49

I have a bizarre issue which has left me completely stuck as to what could be the fault. Does anyone have any ideas?

For the last 6 month I've been running a Windows 10 pc with 1 SSD and 2x 4TB HDD's. The 2 HDD's are using Windows storage spaces to create a single mirrored volume. Up until a few days ago it's been working fine until we had a power cut. Now when powering on the PC all drives are detected in the BIOS and Windows device manager, but neither HDD is picked up in Disk management.

Here's what I've tried so far to diagnose the issue:

If I insert the disks into another PC they work fine
If I put either of the disks into a USB caddy they work fine
If I change the drive for a spare 1TB drive it's picked up fine
Tried changing the SATA cables and different SATA port
Tried formatting 1 of the 4TB disks in my other PC just in case storage spaces was affecting it, still no change
Re-installed Windows on the SSD, didn't make any difference - the Windows installer doesn't see the HDD's either.

I can't for the life of me figure out whether it's an issue with the motherboard or the disks. The motherboard works fine with other disks and the disks work fine with another motherboard. I don't really want to spend money replacing either since I can't find a fault with either independently.

Tanin'iver · 17 Aug 2021 at 22:06

That is a bizarre one indeed...

Erm... not much I can think of to try, but how about... do they show up anything in the diskpart command line tool?

If you boot the PC from a live environment (either Windows or Linux) do they show up and work there?

something daft already!! · 17 Aug 2021 at 22:20

Perhaps something in BIOS is causing the issue. You could try clearing CMOS and see if this helps.

mrbazmondo · 17 Aug 2021 at 22:38

Is windows detecting the hard drive controller? Check in device manager.

Tanin'iver · 18 Aug 2021 at 07:55

something daft already!! said:
Perhaps something in BIOS is causing the issue. You could try clearing CMOS and see if this helps.

I thought that too after I made my previous post - clearing the CMOS or maybe even flashing the BIOS entirely, or just check if it has some feature to force it to re-detect connected SATA devices.

Silent Bob · 18 Aug 2021 at 11:12

Thanks for the replies. I've tried all that! Controller and drives detected in Device Manager and bios. Disks don't show up in diskpart, disk management or when installing the OS. I've cleared the cmos, updated to the latest and also tried installing an older one. In the bios I also noticed a SATA hot plug option. Tried it with that set to both on and off. No difference.

I'm leaning towards it being an issue with the motherboard. I'll probably just retire the computer and add the disks as external storage to my underused Asrock Deskmini.

Silent Bob · 18 Aug 2021 at 22:00

Finally figured out the issue. It was all to do with Windows Storage Spaces. Even though I cleaned the drive in diskpart, metadata about the storage space still remained on the drive. It was only when I went into the storage space settings in Windows it detected the drive was part of a storage space and I was able to remove the metadata. I would have thought deleting the drive partition and reformatting the drive would have cleared this data but obviously not.

Tanin'iver · 18 Aug 2021 at 23:03

Yikes! Thanks for letting us know anyway, one to watch out for. I don't think I'd use the storage spaces feature personally!