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So I connected a new HDD to an unoccupied SATA port on the motherboard. From within windows, I then migrated some data across and everything looked good.

Shutdown the machine.

I then removed an older volume, and plugged my new HDD into that SATA slot. I did that because my motherboard is ridiculously tight for space, and the SATA port for the new HDD is squashed by the presence of the graphics card.

Power back up.

Not good - my new volume is now showing as "Unallocated Space". It obviously has no drive letter. No sign of any file structure whatsoever.

Shutdown the machine again.

Revert to previous SATA port (the one squashed under the graphics card). Same problem. The volume is detected, but shows "Unallocated Space". This is despite being in the same SATA slot as it was a few minutes ago.

Has anyone seen this kind of behaviour before? Windows should not care which SATA slot its connected to, but something has obviously gone wrong here.

And my next question will be. If I can't reconfigure this successfully, does anyone have any experience of any good recovery software? The data has to be out there!

Thanks

MountainGoat
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  • The disk seems to have died - best to contact the vendor that might help with recovering the data. If you still have the data you copied to the disk, just replace it. – harrymc Jul 03 '22 at 07:33
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    Did you fully shutdown Windows or is Fast Startup/Fast Boot enabled _(it doesn't fully shutdown the OS)_? The partition table has been corrupted - use [`TestDisk`](http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk) to recover it. While the former seems more likely than an issue with the drive itself, to check the health of the drive, use [`smartmontools`](https://www.smartmontools.org/wiki/Download#InstalltheWindowspackage) to run a long test and check the health `smartctl -a /dev/`, `smartctl -t long /dev/` _(will take several hours)_, then `smartctl -a /dev/` – JW0914 Jul 03 '22 at 07:40
  • Ok - the machine should have been fully shutdown, but its interesting that I did seem to have a lot of lag when I working with the new volume plugged in. That's another reason for removing the old volume. I will check the Fast Startup/Fast Boot setting (assume that is BIOS). Thanks for such a prompt response (and the TestDisk recommendation). – MountainGoat Jul 03 '22 at 07:42
  • Doh - Fast Startup was on (found it in Power Settings)! – MountainGoat Jul 03 '22 at 07:49

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