New Additional Hard Drive No Longer Showing in This PC or Explorer

[axel]

I installed a new 1TB storage drive a few months ago and all was working fine. I copied lots of seldom used files and photographs to it and I have done this several times since. When I went to backup a few files this morning the hard drive was not showing in This PC or in Explorer. I had a look in Device Manager and the drive is listed there and the status is "working properly".

Any help to get my drive back so that I can access it would be appreciated.

 

[axel]

I am not sure, see image. I assume that it is the unknown disk, however the disk is 1TB and not 257GB? Why would it stop recognising the disk when I have been using it? Unfortunately this is the backup disk to free up storage on my C: drive.

https://imgur.com/gNpvnFT

 

[axel]

Is this an actual hard disk (spinner winner) or an SSD?

It is a 1TB SSD, about 6 weeks old, and there is not that much data on it, probably 200Gb at the most. I ran Sfc /scannow yesterday as I thought bootup was a bit slower than usual. Not sure if that caused the issue or if it was there previously. I do not access the disk very often.

 

[axel]

LIST DISK shows the disk as 257GB

 

[axel]

SSDs are more inclined to die or corrupt themselves in weird and wonderful ways than an HDD, unfortunately, but on the plus side, they also have an ability to fix themselves for no apparent reason than "'cos?" (so I'd avoid messing with the partitions/file tables for now). What model was it? Some drives have known issues that you can get around.

WD Blue SA510 1TB SSD 2.5" SATA Solid State Drive (WDS100T3B0A) purchased here.​

 

[axel]

could do 1 step further in diskpart
select disk x (x being the disk number you want)
list partitions
or list volumes
just to see if it can spot the other 750gb

did you try attach as vhd?
probably wont work with unitialised drive but cant hurt

Sorry I cannot do that as I do not know how to select the drive, remember I cannot see it. It is listed as drive 0 in diskpart so I tried tried "disk 0 list partition" which did not work. The following image is from Device Manager with the correct drive and size and confirmation that is it working properly.

https://imgur.com/ix3yvF1

 

[axel]

Do you have the Western Digital Dashboard software installed? What does that say about the drive?

No devices detected.

would be
diskpart
select disk 0
list volumes

in device manager
where you were in that picture
can you click volumes
then populate?

DISKPART> select disk 0

Disk 0 is now the selected disk.

DISKPART> list volume

Volume ### Ltr Label Fs Type Size Status Info
---------- --- ----------- ----- ---------- ------- --------- --------
Volume 0 C NTFS Partition 231 GB Healthy Boot
Volume 1 RAW Partition 450 MB Healthy Hidden
Volume 2 FAT32 Partition 99 MB Healthy System
Volume 3 RAW Partition 842 MB Healthy Hidden

DISKPART> list partition

There are no partitions on this disk to show.

DISKPART>

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Device Manager - Volume/ populate

https://imgur.com/n0RenTW

This contradicts the the main screen which gives the correct capacity 1000GB and says the device is working properly.

 

[axel]

I have a 300GB external drive that I could use for recovery, but do not want to risk losing 20 years of family photographs and I know I should have backed them up to Google Drive.

 

[axel]

Try something like CrystalDiskInfo which can show your drive stats, it should tell you if the disk is faulty or not.

CrystalDiskInfo

About CrystalDiskInfo A HDD/SSD utility software which supports a part of USB, Intel RAID and NVMe. Aoi Edition Standard Edition Shizuku Edition Kurei Kei Edition Download System Requirements OS Windows XP/Vista/7/8/8.1/10/11Windows Server 2003/2008/2012/2016/2019/2022 Architecture x86/x64/ARM64...

crystalmark.info

This only shows my C drive.

 

[axel]

Tried to initialise the disk and I am getting "Incorrect Function" error. I am really stuck now as I cannot even bite bullet, lose the data and reformat the disk as I cannot see it. Easus found 257GB "lost partition, scanned the disk and found no files.

Any further help would be appreciated.

 

[axel]

Did you try my suggestion? Sometimes if the drive is corrupted on a lower level (e.g. through unexpected power loss), it can repair itself and it'll resist attempts to correct it manually.

I have disconnected the drive this morning and will leave it for day or two. I also have a new SATA cable which I will use when I reconnect.

 

[axel]

I also tried plugging in my 300GB USB external hard drive to check if some files were on there. The drive was recognised and I got the small icon on the task bar but again it did not appear in This PC, although it does appear in Disk Management and is noted as heathy. Could the issue be with This PC?

 

[axel]

I have just discovered that Windows is not automatically assigning a drive letter to external drives. I added one to my external hard drive in disk management and it appeared immediately in This PC with full access available. Could this possibly be the same issue with my internal hard drive, currently disconnected?

 

[axel]

All sorted, so many thank for all the help. Reconnected the drive today with new sata cable and different sata port. Windows found the drive with the correct size and initialised it. I found that I had also backed up my files on the 300MB external drive so I just formatted the additional internal one and all is well.

 

[axel]

Will do. Note my external drive is 300GB and not MB