Weirdest thing I've seen in my 27 years of computing - any ideas?

Yes, that’s one cycle. It very well could cause the problem.

sgtaylor5 said:

Yes, that’s one cycle. It very well could cause the problem.

So if it's the cable, I guess maybe it wasn't plugged in as good as it should or is developing a spot in the cable where the connection is weak. Are you suggesting a cable problem could have caused this weird problem of it hiding my more recent data after 3/15 on my data HD?


Has anyone experienced something similar to this? If so then maybe this is the best explanation for what happened. If this sort of thing can happen from a faulty data cable then I'll be on guard in the future.


My biggest concern is can this data cable problem on my boot HD result in a permanent loss of data from my data HD?

It turns out I had "fast startup" enabled. A tech friend of mine (who built my computer) explained that fast start up is a Win 10 power options setting, not a BIOS setting like I thought.


I think the BIOS setting is called "fast boot" if I recall - 2 different things. The guy also said that this for sure could explain this weird thing that happened. So I now have an explanation. Thanks for all the great tips.

That’s really fascinating. I’ve seen so many problems with windows 10 fast startup setting, but I haven’t seen that one.

sgtaylor5 said:

That’s really fascinating. I’ve seen so many problems with windows 10 fast startup setting, but I haven’t seen that one.

Yes and that's what makes this community so great is the collective knowledge we all have from each other's experiences.

And after every Windows update, you have to disable it again.

PiKo said:

And after every Windows update, you have to disable it again.

I ran the command "powercfg -h off" in a Administrator command prompt and Fast Start has never turned back on after any Windows updates.