HDD and SSDs Not Showing Up (UPDATED)

[furious16]

UPDATE 4/8/2019 - SEE BELOW

Current Situation: I inherited a computer from my friend, who recently moved out of the country. I wiped the data and hard drives, and did a fresh install of Windows 10 with a brand new OEM key. Everything is working great! However, there is an issue with and SSD and HDD that I salvaged from my aforementioned dead PC.

First - the SSD does not show up in BIOS, Device Manager or Data Management. I checked, re-checked, confirmed, re-confirmed, re-re-confirmed, and re-re-re-re-re-reconfirmed that it is hooked up properly with both power cable and SATA cable. it does not show up.

Second - the HDD WAS showing up. Overnight, it seems to have suddenly stopped showing up and is no longer detected by Windows.

So here is the issue in a nutshell - salvaged SSD, which was in working condition when old PC died, does not show up. Salvaged HDD, which was in working condition when old PC died, and was showing up in this computer for two days, no longer shows up suddenly, without warning and without reboot/power down.

SITUATION UPDATE - 4/8/2019

Issue continues. Old SSD was discarded after verifying it does not work anymore. Old HDD had data salvaged off of it and has been disconnected form PC.

NEW SITUATION - a newly purchased Kingston 480gb SSD was installed, initialized and formatted. Shows up in Disk Management. Computer went to sleep, and upon return, “Disconnect” noise was heard, and newly installed/initialized SSD is experiencing SAME ISSUE.

Problem seems to be Win10, not hardware. Have never before experienced a problem like this with custom built systems.

[veeg]

Hello

Hopefully some of our members will chime in soon.

@Bruce @Rustys @phillpower2

[furious16]

Thank you @vger.

Update to situation: SSD is fried…likely destroyed when the old PC power surged. I’ve tested it on an external boot dock and another computer and it does not come up on anything.

Problem with the HDD is that Windows seems to be treating it as removable storage, like a flash drive.

[Bruce]

what kind of power surge are we talking here?
a blown power supply unit or a lightning strike in the neighbourhood?
are there any other dead parts from the power surge apart from the two storage devices?
have you tried the HDD in another PC?

[furious16]

what kind of power surge are we talking here?
a blown power supply unit or a lightning strike in the neighbourhood?
are there any other dead parts from the power surge apart from the two storage devices?
have you tried the HDD in another PC?

Blown power supply coupled with loud pop, sparks and wisp of smoke.

I have no idea if there are other dead parts. I would assume the MoBo, but when a new power supply was put into the old computer, the green light on the MoBo came on. I would assume it wouldn’t have if it were blown. I also saw no scorch marks or popped/blown resistors, transistors or capacitors. Unfortunately I have no other way of testing the mobo aside from confirming it at least had power going to it, unless I wanted to completely swap out all the parts in the new tower and reseating them on the old mobo. I have no intention of doing that.

In any case, I’m pretty sure the SSD is fried since it was tried in another computer. The HDD has not been tested in another computer, but before I formatted it, I was able to browse it and recover the data I needed off of it without issue, before Windows 10 decided to consider it removable storage.

[Bruce]

mobo’s go in a variety of ways and in my experience, most of them don’t involve any sort of visual clues.
yes you can the obvious budging caps but usually they simply stop working and you can’t see why.
so after such a dramatic PSU blow-up, you could almost bet the mobo is fried.

[furious16]

I figured as much, but my main concern at this point is finding out why the old HDD keeps getting “lost” in the new PC.

[Bruce]

top two on my suspicions list would be, a) the drive is old and b) it was last used in a PC that just had a massive PSU power surge.

[furious16]

That’s what I figured as well. It’s not a big deal in the long run…I salvaged what I needed off of it (documents and family pics) so if it’s just better to junk it, i’ll go ahead and do that.

[Bruce]

once you lose trust in the integrity of a storage device, why would you want to still use it.

[furious16]

Ok, so this issue is NOT resolved.

I purchased and installed a Kingston 480gb SSD. I initialized it and followed all the proper steps to do so. Like the HDD, Windows 10 is treating this newly installed SSD as removable storage. I woke up the computer from sleep this morning, only to immediately hear the disconnect sound and see that the device was no longer there.

There is obviously something going on here that is no related to the storage hardware. It seems like a Windows problem. Thread and original post updated to reflect new situation.

[Bruce]

but we are still potentially looking at a PC that has had a serious power surge and could well have a faulty mobo.
can you plug the SSD into another PC?

[furious16]

No, that was the old PC. The one I am currently using is in perfect working order.

I have confirmed that the salvaged SSD from the original PC is fried. What I am currently experiencing is the new PC, with a freshly installed Windows 10 oem, is “losing” the newly purchased SSD if it goes into standby mode.

[phillpower2]

Any update for us?

[phillpower2]

Thread closed due to lack of feedback from the OP.