D drive dissappears

For no apparent reason my D drive, which I've moved all my data to, suddenly disappears. A restart brings it back. I've scanned with Maalwarebytes and Windows Defender and did a chkdsk but none seemed to provide any solutions.

do you mean the entire disk, or do you mean the letter .

diskmgmt screenshot could be useful

SIW2 said:

do you mean the entire disk, or do you mean the letter .

diskmgmt screenshot could be useful

Both I guess. File Explorer shows a D with question mark. My Desktop with Fences is blank except for the Recycle Bin. Normally it looks like pictured. (shows Fences folder names but not thumbnails/ icons)

dalchina said:

Possibly a hardware issue or maybe related to automount.

First, try the simple option. Get a copy of Hard Disk Sentinel (full functional trial) and run that.
Result right on the GUI, click tab on left to see report on drive. Post a screenshot.

Second, elimination:
a. try substitution (for test purposes).
Replace the drive with a spare, and see if the same thing occurs.

b. now substitute the O/S. Create a live boot disk and boot your PC from that. See if the same problem occurs.
live boot disk - Google if unsure what that is - e.g. Bob Omb's, Hiren's ...
- download the iso file and create a bootable disk from that e.g. using Rufus (see tutorial on creating a bootable disk for suitable instructions on using Rufus).

Thanks. I'm on the road, and will try when I get home in a couple weeks.

P.S> When it happens again I'll take a screenshot. I've since rebooted and it's back.

dalchina said:

When D: disappears again, check the status of Automount:

Enable or Disable Automount of New Disks and Drives in Windows

OK. It's enabled now.

Like @SIW2 asked previosuly is your "D" drive a partition on a disk or an entire disk? Is it an internal drive or a external drive. I assume its a different disk if you C drive/disk is working OK?? A screenshot from disk manager would help from "computer management" app

Reece said:

Like @SIW2 asked previosuly is your "D" drive a partition on a disk or an entire disk? Is it an internal drive or a external drive. I assume its a different disk if you C drive/disk is working OK?? A screenshot from disk manager would help from "computer management" app

Yes, it's a separate HDD (in my specs) I kept system on the C drive that came with the laptop and added another for data. It's showing now but for no apparent reason disappears, usually while I'm on the web.

Since it is a separate drive, is it a internal, external USB, Network?