Missing Hard Drive with Windows Vista Ultimate

[husky86]

I'm running a desktop system with Windows Vista Ultimate. I have encountered
a problem that I know is being experienced by other Vista users; I'm hoping
there is a workaround.

I have an internal 1 TB Hitachi hard drive (not the C drive). This desktop
system is only about six months old, and ever since I first acquired it I
found that this internal hard drive would go missing after putting Vista into
Sleep or Hibernation mode. Restarting the system would always enable Vista
to recognize the internal 1 TB hard drive again.

However, about two weeks ago this temporary fix wasn't working anymore --
restarting Vista didn't enable the 1 TB internal drive to be recognized.
It's been missing ever since.

And yet this drive is working properly according to Device Manager
(Including having the latest driver).

Doing a Google search has produced a few other threads on the web where
Vista users are also experiencing missing hard drives. Supposedly this
situation is to be directly addressed by Microsoft with the release of
Service Pack 1. Unfortunately, I need access to my internal hard drive now,
not weeks from now when Service Pack 1 is finally released.

Does anyone know of a workaround? Any solution whatsoever... outside of
reinstalling Vista?

Thanks!

 

[xiowan]

Hello "husky86":
Sata drive cable connections have been known to come loose. You might
check and make sure both ends of the data cable are firmly attached. Also
check to see if the power cable is tightly connected. If that doesn't help I
would need to know if your board bios can see still see the drive. If it
does, then I would check in Disk Management to see if it shows there.
Sometimes you can see the drive in disk management but not just by clicking
"Computer". If it shows up in Disk Management but is not listed as active
and healthy you might check and see if you can see the drive in the Media
Center Window under recorder. I couldn't get Vista to see a drive I had
moved to my pc from another but it was visible in Media Center and I
temporarilly selected it to be the "Recording Drive". After a file was
established on that drive for recorded tv it began showing up in Computer and
the entire drive was then accessible. I then just went back into Media
Center and changed the recording drive back to the previous one and have had
no problems since. These suggestions may not be the solution but you could
give them a try......won't hurt anything at least! Good luck!

xiowan........in tucson

 

[Hueyd]

I am having the same problem. I have a second SATA HDD (D that I use for
storage and backup. When the computer wakes up from Sleep mode it is gone.
I go to system tools, and it is gone, device manager gone. The only way I
get it back is to re-boot. The bios finds it just fine, then I am ok. But I
can't put my computer to sleep or it will not be there when it wakes up.

 

[husky86]

xiowan:

I did check all the connections on the drives themselves; no problems.

I was able to get the drive to be recognized by the BIOS; there are no
problems with this aspect.

The drive is not recognized under Disk Management, however.

The drive is recognized under the Device Manager; right clicking on the
drive and going to Properties shows that the drive is "working properly."

The drive was not recognized by Windows Media Center, however.

So it's definitely a mixed bag to report.

Thanks for your input!

 

[cqui3]

Uninstall it in device manager. Reboot.
They should appear in Disk Management.
Assign them a letter, if necessary.

 

[husky86]

cqui3:

Before uninstalling in Device Manager I wanted to check and make sure that
such an uninstall process isn't going to risk the loss of any data on the
hard drive...?

This is what we are trying to prevent at all costs, of course.

(Amazingly, the backup hard drive (an external 1 TB) and this internal hard
drive had problems during the same week (different problems, but it made both
of them unusable). So this is the only copy of this data that we have.)

Thanks!

 

[husky86]

During the past 2-3 months I have been waiting for the release of Service
Pack 1 in order that this ongoing problem may be solved. In other words, I
was told by my computer's manufacturer that Service Pack 1 would most
definitely solve this ongoing "missing hard drive" problem.

I was able to install Service Pack 1 today. The internal 1 TB Hitachi drive
still did not appear. Bringing up My Computer showed only the C drive (Disk
1) and the external 1 TB Lacie drive (Disk 0) .

Going back into Disk Management I found Disk 2 -- which I believe to be the
internal 1 TB drive -- to be unallocated. The following is a snapshot of the
present situation:

http://bp2.blogger.com/_-RQq-aijzY0...w/htXX4qISYrg/s1600-h/Computer+Management.jpg

Because I know formal allocation of a drive requires formatting, I attempted
to allocate the drive and get it to be recognized by Vista without
reformatting the drive. (I assigned it its previous drive letter (X).)
However, this allocation attempt did not prove successful in that I'm
constantly told by the OS that I must format the drive before I can use it.

Does anyone have any suggestions on this present situation?

Again, this internal 1 Terabyte Drive has a lot of data on it that is
extremely valuable. I do not want to have to erase the drive if at all
possible.

Thanks!

 

[Colin Barnhorst]

Assign it a drive letter. That does not format the drive.

 

[andy]

During the past 2-3 months I have been waiting for the release of Service
Pack 1 in order that this ongoing problem may be solved. In other words, I
was told by my computer's manufacturer that Service Pack 1 would most
definitely solve this ongoing "missing hard drive" problem.

I was able to install Service Pack 1 today. The internal 1 TB Hitachi drive
still did not appear. Bringing up My Computer showed only the C drive (Disk
1) and the external 1 TB Lacie drive (Disk 0) .

Going back into Disk Management I found Disk 2 -- which I believe to be the
internal 1 TB drive -- to be unallocated. The following is a snapshot of the
present situation:

The drive space is allocated as a primary partition. The problem is
the file system isn't being recognized.

http://bp2.blogger.com/_-RQq-aijzY0...w/htXX4qISYrg/s1600-h/Computer+Management.jpg

Because I know formal allocation of a drive requires formatting, I attempted
to allocate the drive and get it to be recognized by Vista without
reformatting the drive. (I assigned it its previous drive letter (X).)
However, this allocation attempt did not prove successful in that I'm
constantly told by the OS that I must format the drive before I can use it.

Did you try running chkdsk in read-only mode to see what problems it
sees?

Does anyone have any suggestions on this present situation?

I would try running TestDisk to see what problems, if any, it sees.
Your best bet is using a file recovery program.

 

[husky86]

How is it possible to run chkdsk in read-only mode? I only know how to check
the disk under "normal" circumstances, I guess you could say.

Thanks!

 

[husky86]

Hi Colin,

Assigning a drive letter did not produce any beneficial effects; it's still
treated as a disk that needs to be formatted, one that doesn't seem to be
formally recognized by the operating system.

If you have any further ideas, I would love to hear them.

Thanks!

 

[andy]

chkdsk x:
Don't specify any flags.

How is it possible to run chkdsk in read-only mode? I only know how to check
the disk under "normal" circumstances, I guess you could say.

Thanks!

 

[husky86]

Andy,

Here's the results:

Microsoft Windows [Version 6.0.6001]
Copyright (c) 2006 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

C:\>chkdsk x:
The type of the file system is RAW.
CHKDSK is not available for RAW drives.


C:\>

Any further suggestions?

Thanks!

 

[Roy Ballew]

If this is a new HD or hasn't been set up yet.. do the following..

Go to Control Panel ..<-- Administration Tools.. <--Computer Mgmt..-- > Disk
Mgmt.

Set your HD up..

RJB

Andy,

Here's the results:

Microsoft Windows [Version 6.0.6001]
Copyright (c) 2006 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

C:\>chkdsk x:
The type of the file system is RAW.
CHKDSK is not available for RAW drives.


C:\>

Any further suggestions?

Thanks!

chkdsk x:
Don't specify any flags.

 

[husky86]

Any recovery programs you'd recommend in this situation?

Kevin

Andy,

Here's the results:

Microsoft Windows [Version 6.0.6001]
Copyright (c) 2006 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

C:\>chkdsk x:
The type of the file system is RAW.
CHKDSK is not available for RAW drives.


C:\>

Any further suggestions?

Try a file recovery program.

Thanks!

 

[husky86]

The following is a report on the final situation associated with this missing
hard drive. If anyone has any information on what this technician (below)
referred to as a "involuntary drive swap" I would be thrilled to hear about
it. Thus far I cannot find anything within the Microsoft knowledge base
about it:

I tried a complete reinitialization of the C: drive to see if Vista would
then recognize the internal 1 TB drive. This was recommended by the
computer's manufacturer.

As expected, reinstalling Vista (clean installation) did nothing as far as
enabling it to be able to recognize the missing hard drive.

So I contacted a data recovery service today and we agreed to begin the
attempted process of data recovery.

Even though I was a little hesitant about the potentialities and/or
ramifications, a large number of data recovery efforts are performed remotely
by this service, as long as the operating system can recognize the drive
through the bios. After about 30 minutes of turning over my computer to this
expert (remotely), I was shocked to find out from this same technician that
Vista had performed a type of “involuntary drive swap†when the Lacie drive
(external) crashed, was disconnected, and after we resumed the computer out
of a sleep mode.

Although the technician could not fully explain how it happens (but said
that they have definitely seen it before on a number of occasions when a hard
drive crashed), Vista automatically renamed and re-lettered the internal 1 TB
Hitachi drive exactly with the specs of the external crashed and disconnected
Lacie hard drive.

· Prior to disconnecting the external Lacie drive, it was showing up on the
desktop as "Lacie 1 TB Big Disk (Dâ€. After disconnecting, this drive icon
remained in place whenever bringing up My Computer or within any application.
I thought that this was extraordinarily strange and reported it to Voodoo,
but they said that they didn't have an explanation at the time. They
referred everything back to the fact that "once Service Pack 1 is released,
all of these problems will be resolved..." So I really didn't think too much
about just leaving this icon in place.

· At the exact same time that we disconnected the Lacie drive -- or at least
in association with the very next wake up -- the internal 1 TB Hitachi drive
(drive lable X disappeared altogether.

· Once it performed the swap, it somehow erased all of the files thereon.
How it did this is not clear. The technician also didn't know either.

According to this technician, Vista somehow automatically reassigns one
drive for another in this form of involuntary drive swap. It doesn't happen
that often, but they have seen their fair share. I asked whether or not this
was just for Vista or had they seen it on XP and other Windows OS. The
technician replied that it doesn't matter which version of Windows, "It's
just Windows!" The group of people that I was working with today didn't
sound like they were big fans of the Windows OS.

This technician was able to explain the fact that in reality what I thought
was the external backup was actually the internal 1 TB drive all along.

The ultimate bottom line is that the files are gone. Nonrecoverable --
period.

Since we have been using the internal 1 TB Hitachi drive all along, there is
no recoverable data. The technician searched for any recoverable photo
files, but they were nowhere to be found.

All this time I've thought that I was using the external Lacie drive I was
actually using the internal 1 TB Hitachi drive -- the one showing up as
“Lacie 1 TB Big Disk (Dâ€.

The external Lacie drive has been totally dormant the entire time. It has
not been functioning under any capacities since we received it from Lacie.
One of the primary reasons that I simply didn't know that it wasn't
functioning was because it is located on the opposite side of the desktop
system where I technically can't see the front (to see if the transfer lights
are working from time to time).

This whole situation sounds almost too strange to be true. But there it is.

Any recovery programs you'd recommend in this situation?

Kevin

Andy,

Here's the results:

Microsoft Windows [Version 6.0.6001]
Copyright (c) 2006 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

C:\>chkdsk x:
The type of the file system is RAW.
CHKDSK is not available for RAW drives.


C:\>

Any further suggestions?

Try a file recovery program.

Thanks!



:

chkdsk x:
Don't specify any flags.

On Thu, 20 Mar 2008 03:24:05 -0700, husky86

How is it possible to run chkdsk in read-only mode? I only know how to check
the disk under "normal" circumstances, I guess you could say.

Thanks!


:

On Wed, 19 Mar 2008 02:48:01 -0700, husky86

During the past 2-3 months I have been waiting for the release of Service
Pack 1 in order that this ongoing problem may be solved. In other words, I
was told by my computer's manufacturer that Service Pack 1 would most
definitely solve this ongoing "missing hard drive" problem.

I was able to install Service Pack 1 today. The internal 1 TB Hitachi drive
still did not appear. Bringing up My Computer showed only the C drive (Disk
1) and the external 1 TB Lacie drive (Disk 0) .

Going back into Disk Management I found Disk 2 -- which I believe to be the
internal 1 TB drive -- to be unallocated. The following is a snapshot of the
present situation:

The drive space is allocated as a primary partition. The problem is
the file system isn't being recognized.

http://bp2.blogger.com/_-RQq-aijzY0...w/htXX4qISYrg/s1600-h/Computer+Management.jpg

Because I know formal allocation of a drive requires formatting, I attempted
to allocate the drive and get it to be recognized by Vista without
reformatting the drive. (I assigned it its previous drive letter (X).)
However, this allocation attempt did not prove successful in that I'm
constantly told by the OS that I must format the drive before I can use it.

Did you try running chkdsk in read-only mode to see what problems it
sees?


Does anyone have any suggestions on this present situation?

I would try running TestDisk to see what problems, if any, it sees.
Your best bet is using a file recovery program.


Again, this internal 1 Terabyte Drive has a lot of data on it that is
extremely valuable. I do not want to have to erase the drive if at all
possible.

Thanks!


:

I am having the same problem. I have a second SATA HDD (D that I use for
storage and backup. When the computer wakes up from Sleep mode it is gone.
I go to system tools, and it is gone, device manager gone. The only way I
get it back is to re-boot. The bios finds it just fine, then I am ok. But I
can't put my computer to sleep or it will not be there when it wakes up.


:

I'm running a desktop system with Windows Vista Ultimate. I have encountered
a problem that I know is being experienced by other Vista users; I'm hoping
there is a workaround.

I have an internal 1 TB Hitachi hard drive (not the C drive). This desktop
system is only about six months old, and ever since I first acquired it I
found that this internal hard drive would go missing after putting Vista into
Sleep or Hibernation mode. Restarting the system would always enable Vista
to recognize the internal 1 TB hard drive again.

However, about two weeks ago this temporary fix wasn't working anymore --
restarting Vista didn't enable the 1 TB internal drive to be recognized.
It's been missing ever since.

And yet this drive is working properly according to Device Manager
(Including having the latest driver).

Doing a Google search has produced a few other threads on the web where
Vista users are also experiencing missing hard drives. Supposedly this
situation is to be directly addressed by Microsoft with the release of
Service Pack 1. Unfortunately, I need access to my internal hard drive now,
not weeks from now when Service Pack 1 is finally released.

Does anyone know of a workaround? Any solution whatsoever... outside of
reinstalling Vista?

Thanks!

 

[Chuck]

Actually it points to the WD drive as not exactly what the SATA driver is
expecting.
The cure can be as simple as flipping a bit in the registry, or as extreme
as using another HD.
I'd talk to WD support.