Windows 10 DVD Drives

[roger_hawke]

I have 4 in no. DVD Drives connected to PC
2 X SATA Drives (DRIVES D & E)
2 X PATA Drives (DRIVES F & H) connected to motherboard via a PCI Express Card.

All four drives were showing yesterday.

SATA DRIVES D & E are still showing but PATA DRIVES F & H have disappeared and do not even show in device manager.

I have tried system restore - did not help.
I have tried to delete upper and lower filters, but there were no filters to delete.

I have also noticed that the $Extend folder has grown from 20 mb to almost 10gb???

Looking for assistance please.

[veeg]

Hello

Hopefully some of our members will chime in soon..

@phillpower2 @Bruce

[phillpower2]

Hello Roger,

Two separate issues so will only deal with the drives for now, have you checked the Device Manager for any yellow ! or red X against the PCI-E card, is the card showing in the BIOS etc.

Lets start with the basic information gathering;

Download then run Speccy (free) and post the resultant url for us, details here, this will provide us with information about your computer hardware + any software that you have installed that may explain the present issue/s.

To publish a Speccy profile to the Web:

In Speccy, click File, and then click Publish Snapshot.

In the Publish Snapshot dialog box, click Yes to enable Speccy to proceed.

Speccy publishes the profile and displays a second Publish Snapshot. You can open the URL in your default browser, copy it to the clipboard, or close the dialog box.

[roger_hawke]

phillpower2,
Many thanks for response.
For the time being please forget about the DVD Drives - all appears to be back to normal.
I did a further restore and also carried out sfc /scannow and between the 2 operations it appears to be sorted.
All drives now showing in This PC and also in Device Manager.
Apologies for time wasting.

The only other problem is this wretched $Extend folder.
Mid December I did a clean install of Win 10 because the $Extend folder was almost 9gb.
After clean install the folder was 20.1mb - this was until Saturday just gone, it then rose to almost 10gb (the same day I had the problem with the DVD Drives.

I have scoured the internet to try to find out what exactly this folder is all about, why it gets created and why it grows in size???
I have found no real info. that helps me understand what it is all about.

I understand that it can’t be deleted and if it could be deleted it would have an adverse effect on Windows.
I did read somewhere that it could be reduced in size by using fsutil utility (whatever that may be). But I wouldn’t know how to use it anyway!!

[phillpower2]

No problem Roger, glad to hear that you got your drives back (y)

We could still do with the Speccy url so that we can see what is going on with the software.

This in short and therefore it could be better explained, the $Extend folder is where stuff ends up when the NTFS is used, this includes anything that you open on the computer, AV scans/updates, files, programmes, Windows and Windows updates to name just a few things, using the likes of CCleaner will help to fill this folder up as would upgrading Windows, this is not something that the average user should need or attempt to get involved in.

[jmarket]

Agree with @phillpower2 as per the last couple of times we looked at this folder for you

https://pchelpforum.net/t/extend-folder-windows-10.44431/#post-82519

https://pchelpforum.net/t/what-is-extend-folder-windows-10.41692/#post-78056

[roger_hawke]

phillpower2,

By the way the 2 DVD Dives have gone missing again. (Not even showing in Device Manager)

Info as requested - Hopefully this is what you require?

http://speccy.piriform.com/results/e2y0gWqAD6cqDTRiumjAzbq

Back to the $Extend folder - is it likely that it will keep growing in size?
I really don’t wish to be clean re - installing Windows every month!!!

[phillpower2]

Can you post the brand and model name or number of the PSU and the same for the add on card that the drives are connected to.

The $Extend folder will continue to expand but you can help slow this down by getting rid of Avast and reducing the use of CCleaner to a minimum, remember that the more that you save to any storage device, write to disk or move files around the more storage space the $Extend folder will use.

[roger_hawke]

phillpower2,
Thanks again.

Details of my system can be found in my account details - except for PCI express card.

PSU - OCZ STEALTHSTREAM 600W OCZ600SXS

PCI Express Card - CSL - PCI Express eSATA SATAII PATA IDE interface card - controller card 2 x eSATA, 2 x SATA II and 1 x PATA - incl. RAID controller JBOD. (Purchased May 2019)
The PCI Card came with a mini installation disk.

Was the Speccy what you wanted?

[phillpower2]

Sorry Roger but it is not for people who are offering their help to go digging around in peoples accounts to get information, even if that were at all possible for them to do.

If that is the correct PSU info then it is potentially 12 to 13 years old, reason why I asked for the info is to check for the possibility that this was a low power issue.

The CSL add on card is not showing in the Speccy Device Tree and something is going on with the PCI-E X1 slots, the MB specs say it has four slots but Speccy detects five and all of them are detected as being in use.

[roger_hawke]

phillpower2,

My apologies - I thought you had access to members’ specs.

The motherboard handbook shows 6 in no. PCI SLOTS;

PCI_E1 PCI E 3.0x16
PCI_E2 PCIe 3.0x1
PCI_E3 PCIe 3.0x1
PCI_E4 PCIe 3.0x4
PCI_E5 PCIe 3.0x1
PCI_E6 PCIe 3.0x1
The Card is currently plugged into PCI_E2.
No other slots are in use.

Would it do any harm to run the card installation disk again?
How can I confirm that the Card is OK? It might be faulty?

[phillpower2]

Only four of the slots are X1, the other two are for an add on GPU, note the X16 and the X4 in your list above.

You could try the card in the other three Xl slots to see if that helps any, as for running the installation disk again, to do this you would have to be able to uninstall the device in Device Manager then restart the computer, the specs say that the card is Windows 10 compatible so should be plug n play and not need any driver installation from what I read online.

[roger_hawke]

phillpower2,

I tried the card in the other 3 available slots - no sign of drives.
I also tried the card in the other 3 slots without the DVD drives/ribbon connected, but could see no sign of the card in Device Manager.
(Where would the card show in Device Manager - under which heading?)

I proved the slots by inserting a SoundBlaster sound card and they all worked OK.

[roger_hawke]

phillpower2,

Back again.
If I do away with Avast and CCleaner, will Windows Defender suffice as a replacement for both.
If not, any suggestions?

[phillpower2]

Check under storage controllers, as previously mentioned the card was not listed in the Speccy report so would not be expected to show up in Device Manager, long shot but you could try clearing the BIOS.

Defender is better than Avast in a few ways but not sure why you would think that Defender could replace CCleaner as they are not the same type of program, CCleaner is alright btw but only if used in moderation, the registry cleaner should be kept well clear of and Drive Wiper should not be used regular as that is what can take up space on the HDD, read one thread were Drive Wiper supposedly took up 600GB.