HDD just disappeared..

mothermachine

mothermachine

mothermachine

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Joined
8 Oct 2004
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2,283
Hi all,

I have a Samsung 1TB HDD installed using SATA on one of the GSATA ports of my UD5 mobo. I had formatted it and filled it with data but it's just disappeared from windows. It is shown as working and visible in Device Manager but doesn't appear in Disk Management. It does show up using Gigabyte's Smart Backup (RAID) Tool but says that it's empty!

Any ideas what's going on?
 
download parted magic iso, burn it with imgburn

boot from the cd, use 'testdisk' to restore the partition
 
mothermachine said:
Hi all,

I have a Samsung 1TB HDD installed using SATA on one of the GSATA ports of my UD5 mobo. I had formatted it and filled it with data but it's just disappeared from windows. It is shown as working and visible in Device Manager but doesn't appear in Disk Management. It does show up using Gigabyte's Smart Backup (RAID) Tool but says that it's empty!

Any ideas what's going on?
Click to expand...

Not another one! Happened with my F1 last week. Just completely disappeared. I tried running Find Any File and Find Any Partition with very limited success - It could see the partition but it was completely inaccessible and I couldn't retrieve anything from it. Also, running Samsung's ES Tool gave me an error code and advised to erase the disk.

Have you tried mounting it via something like a USB enclosure? Possibly worth a try. Interested to know if you have more success than me. Best of luck.
 
Yikes... it's apparently a brand new drive. Bought it on the MM. If it's dodgy I will be very annoyed.

I don't have an external enclosure I can use to test it. I'll give this TestDisk a shot and see what happens. Thankfully it was only ever being used as a backup drive so I've not lost any important data. Just a massive pain in the bum if I need to format or buy a new one obviously.

Cheers,
 
I'm not actually using the drive in RAID mode that's the thing. I'm just using it as a regular old NTFS drive, just happens to be on a GSATA port (I ran out of normal ports).

I'm confused how a partition/HDD can suddenly just disappear like that, especially as the gigabyte Smart Backup RAID utility can see the drive just fine. (although it reports it as empty).

Running TestDisk in windows doesn't see the drive at all.
 
If it shows up in the device manager, can you change its partition letter? Something may have changed to just hide this one.... if you change it to another letter, it *may* reappear...
 
ffs...

i've got three of these things in this machine and the other 2 are working fine.

i do have another couple of machines i can test it in though. i'll try that next and see what happens.

if no joy then i'll try various recovery options. if that doesn't work it's off to Rexo for an RMA. I just hope they will accept it, as I bought it from the MM here.
 
If all else fails, assuming it is a partition/mft problem I always use GetDataBack for NTFS. Great program... it can even recover data from destroyed raid! (With help from a sister program)
 
I had this problem for sooooo long, the drive just kept dissapearing, then coming back. I ended up getting rid of the mobo, cpu, ram, hdd's sata cables and everything.

I probably could have found the problem, btu I was lazy :D. I gave one of the old hdd's, mobo, cpu and ram to my gf and it seems to work fine so it must have been something incompatable or loose or damaged. *shrugs
 
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