Slow shutdown one night and now a Disk is missing

Terrace2 · 22 Mar 2018

Recently upgraded some parts of my computer but put the old drives back in as they were. This went fine for two weeks then one night the computer just took an ice age to shutdown and now when it boots up it also takes an age from the 10 seconds it used to when everything was fine on:
Samsung 850 evo with rapid mode on
Windows 10 fast boot Bios
MSI fast boot program/Bios

to 4 minutes or so with the problem drive attached, the drive in disk management says unitialized but it had tons of data on it and was working fine. The first thing I tried was all the other sata cables and all the other (power?) cables, then a USB-to-Sata cable I had and finally the hotswap bay, no matter how I plug it in it just comes up as a uninitialized disk.

I did a quick google of course and people were saying to use Minipartition tool to redo the boot drive records or something or use EaseUS to recover the data on the drive and go from there. Both of these unfamiliar (to me) software's installed and neither of them even see the drive despite it being in disk management.

I'd rather not use either software as I don't really know them. If anyone can help me just get the drive back in working order without them that would be better. I'm ready to give any more information or take more pictures, just say what and how.

If checkdisk or repairdisk or something within windows would have a shot at repairing the drive without losing the data i'd like to try anything like that but I don't know how.

Slow shutdown one night and now a Disk is missing-seagate6.jpg

Slow shutdown one night and now a Disk is missing-seagate7.jpg

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Slow shutdown one night and now a Disk is missing-seagate9.jpg

Slow shutdown one night and now a Disk is missing-seagate.jpg

Slow shutdown one night and now a Disk is missing-seagate2.jpg

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Slow shutdown one night and now a Disk is missing-seagate5.jpg

Caledon Ken · 22 Mar 2018

Hi Terrace2. Welcome to the TenForums @Terrace2

Maybe you could describe what you updated? (New 2TB ssd ??) and how you went about installing Windows.

How much work have you done installing programs on C: ?

Your drives don't look right. Notice disk 1 has your recovery and EFI partitions. Normally they would be on Disk 0 with your System.

You will see in a lot of posts that when you install Wndows just have you boot drive installed so this doesn't happen.

Maybe this is contributing to boot / shutdown issues but I don't think it is preventing you from seeing disk.

There is a member who is very good at recovering data but I think it might be worth first answering the questions.

jumanji · 23 Mar 2018

"I did a quick google of course and people were saying to use Minipartition tool to redo the boot drive records or something or use EaseUS to recover the data on the drive and go from there. Both of these unfamiliar (to me) software's installed and neither of them even see the drive despite it being in disk management."

Sorry to say that the prognosis in your case is bad. I am afraid the all important Sector 0 has gone bad - along with many other sectors. The bad sectors have been growing in time as evidenced from 10 seconds to 4 minutes.

If your drive cannot be seen by any other software, no DIY recovery is possible.

In Windows Disk Management, right click on the Disk 3 icon with a downpointing Red arrow ( your unknown not initialised drive) and click on "Initialise Disk" > Choose MBR > OK. If the Disk gets initialised, stop with it and do not do anything further, ( Initialisation just writes MBR code to Sector 0 and your data is not affected in any way. Only if MBR code gets written, other software can see the drive and we can attempt data recovery.)

If it is not getting initialised and throws up an error message, end of the story. Only a competent professional data recovery agency can recover whatever uncorrupt data could be recovered.

Terrace2 · 23 Mar 2018

Caledon Ken said:

Maybe you could describe what you updated? (New 2TB ssd ??) and how you went about installing Windows.

How much work have you done installing programs on C: .....

new parts are processor, motherboard and ram, installed windows by plugging in only the Samsung evo which I was using on the previous windows 10 install with the old processor motherboard and ram.

I first went into the bios, hit secure erase+ and turned on windows 10 WHQL mode, after the install process I went back into the bios and windows 10 whql mode was back off, I toggled it on again but I have no idea if it installed correctly but I didn't do anything between turning it on and installing 10 before it turned itself back off.

Once the PC was running I put the other drives back in. I think disk 1 has had things like recovery and EFI show up on it even on my windows 8.1 and upgrade to windows 10 install, I have really bad luck with windows just putting things on other drives even with a "one disk attached" install method, things like direct X, VC something and a third thing redistributables from game installs always seem to wind up on other drives even though I only ever install to C: other drives like E: H: G: and whatever else I have always end up with hidden files in the base directory belonging to installs like that, I can never figure out how to forbid windows from migrating stuff and installing in the wrong place like that.

Later after I made the post I removed the problem drive from the hotswap bay ontop of my PC and my boot times became a lot better, probably 15 seconds instead of 10 but it's something better than the 4 minutes!

Other than installing games I can easily redownload from steam over a few hours there is nothing of incredible value that is new on C: , just a few updated saves I can rescue if you need me to start again.

Thank you for the reply and if my reply requires more questions I'm happy to answer because my drive had large uncompressed moments with videos I can't recreate that I didn't get to encoding.

edit: Is there any chance that Samsung magician's rapid mode put the EFI and other things on disk 1?

jumanji said:

[I]"I did a quick google of course and people were saying to use Minipartition tool to redo the boot drive records or something or use EaseUS to recover the data on the drive and go from there. Both of these unfamiliar (to me) software's installed and neither of them even [B]see the drive despite it being in disk management."

the drive is in disk management but I didn't re-initialise the disk as all the google results agreed that it would wipe the drive contents, but also one time I did click to try because I was desperate but it told me it couldn't do the operation anyway as it thinks the disk is 0mb/gb/tb big!

Once the bad disk (3) was out of the computer my boot disk (0) gets me to windows in about 15 seconds instead of 4 minutes since I posted the problem

the only one of the options I tried with initialising the disk was G---- (guid?) something, and it gave me that 0mb big error, it's likely to do the same with Master Boot Record mode right? so i'm still in a problem situation it seems.

Caledon Ken · 23 Mar 2018

In reading your post I believe we are seeing stuff on Disk 1 from your old Windows 8.1 install, which was UEFI boot.

Since you said you only had C: attached then this makes sense.

You must be booting Legacy and not UEFI.

I was hoping jumanji would join thread. You need to follow his instructions to the letter if you hope yo get data back.

Then once you have your data you can discuss if you want to re-install Windows. Just so I can peak at manual which MSI board do you have ?

jumanji · 23 Mar 2018

^ I had already given my verdict - post #3 . He declined to carry out my instructions to try initialising it but he seems to have already tried to initialise it before in desperation and got only an error message - zero capacity. Confirms his drive is damaged. In such case no DIY data recovery is possible. He has to seek the services of a professional data recovery agency. jumanji sitting on the armchair can't do anything - helpless :).

Where possible I don't hesitate to give a helping hand. A recent - just a day old - success story here ext portable hard disk turned raw Solved - Windows 7 Help Forums

Terrace2 · 23 Mar 2018

Caledon Ken said:

IThen once you have your data you can discuss if you want to re-install Windows. Just so I can peak at manual which MSI board do you have ?

I'm ready to reinstall Windows as it doesn't require my problem drive anyway, i'm quite curious to see what we do differently!
The new motherboard is a Z370 SLI Plus, Once I get C: all set up I could even transfer things off of disk 1 and format it clearing up my old windows 8.1 install and such which would be great.

jumanji said:

He declined to carry out my instructions to try initialising it

I didn't want to seem like I was declining any help, i'm re-reading your post, you say to initialise with Master Boot Record, will this succeed if the drive is reporting 0mb of space? or will it give me the error of 0mb of space again? the drive is just sitting here next to me and I can put it in the hotswap bay to try this, I just thought i'd ask if the error message would be the same anyway before putting a faulty drive back in (that seems to hurt my boot and shutdown times!)

I'm ready to try if you think it will work!

jumanji · 23 Mar 2018

If you had tried to initialise the drive as a GPT drive and got an error message that it can't, because the drive has zero capacity, I have got the answer - confirmation the drive is physically dead. A physically dead drive can only be dealt with by a professional data recovery agency who will examine it, test it and tell you whether the data is recoverable or not and to what extent. No DIY data recovery is possible since the drive will not be visible to any data recovery program and for us to guide you on it from a distance..

Terrace2 · 23 Mar 2018

jumanji said:

If you had tried to initialise the drive as a GPT drive and got an error message that it can't, because the drive has zero capacity, I have got the answer - confirmation the drive is physically dead. A physically dead drive can only be dealt with by a professional data recovery agency who will examine it, test it and tell you whether the data is recoverable or not and to what extent. No DIY data recovery is possible since the drive will not be visible to any data recovery program and for us to guide you on it from a distance..

Thank you very much for your help jumanji, I will order a new drive immediately. May I ask if there is a new standard 2tb drive that people use or should I just pick up another barracuda?
The usage of the drive is to record uncompressed 3440x1440 video to it for hours upon hours at a time before encoding it with Adobe Premiere to another drive on the system, then deleting the uncompressed video and starting the whole process again.

Caledon Ken · 23 Mar 2018

Okay. So start by getting a copy of windows on a 8GB USB thumb drive. You use the media creation tool to create. The tool is here. Download and install then run tool.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-ca/soft...load/windows10

Here is our clean install directions.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-ca/soft...load/windows10

Reference page 50 of manual for details but Windows 10 WHQL should be enabled, fast boot off and secure boot off. Once installed you can enable secure and fast.

Again do this with only SSD installed. As part of install, think it is step 13 in tutorial, delete all existing partitions and let windows create. Disk needs to be GPT to boot UEFI, Windows should handle.

Once installed post screen shot from disk management. You should see Reserved, EFI, Recovery and System. You might want to shrink C: after install to some reasonable number, maybe 300GB and allocate space to something else. This way when you have to format C: (reinstalls) you don't lose 2TB. (Minitool Partition Wizard will do the job)

Make sure you get everything off C: before reinstalling.

I would also consider Macrium once your running, can discuss later.