I lost 2 Hard Disks after updated from Build 9860 to 9879  

Here is my latest understanding of this issue:
Issue: The apparent multiple failures of HDD and SSD drives in Build 9879
It appears that the issue with Win 10 and HDD and SSD apparent failures
is that attempts by Win 10 to use the Power-Up In Standby (PUIS) feature
on a HDD (or SSD) that is capable of the feature without verifying that
the MB BIOS is compliant.
Conditions:
- Build 9879 updated or installed with from the Build 9879 iso.
- ANY HDD (or SSD) that is capable of PUIS functionality
-- In my case, Seagate ST1000DM003 Hard drive (Which is PUIS capable)
- ANY MotherBoard that is NOT capable of PUIS functionality.
-- In my case, Gigabyte GA-Z68MA-D2H-B3, Rev 1.3
-- and Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD3R, Rev 1.0
###########################################################
NOTE: Here is an extract and WARNING from MAN page for linux hdparm command:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
-s
Enable/disable the power-on in standby feature, if supported by
the drive. VERY DANGEROUS. Do not use unless you are abso-
lutely certain that both the system BIOS (or firmware) and the
operating system kernel (Linux >= 2.6.22) support probing for
drives that use this feature. When enabled, the drive is pow-
ered-up in the standby mode to allow the controller to sequence
the spin-up of devices, reducing the instantaneous current draw
burden when many drives share a power supply. Primarily for use
in large RAID setups. This feature is usually disabled and the
drive is powered-up in the active mode (see -C above). Note
that a drive may also allow enabling this feature by a jumper.
Some SATA drives support the control of this feature by pin 11
of the SATA power connector. In these cases, this command may be
unsupported or may have no effect.
##########################################################
Windows 10, build 9879 is OBVIOUSLY attemting to activate/use this feature
on the HDD that has the capability without first verifying whether or not
the MB is capable or compliant with this feature - In this case, the MB
is NOT PUIS compliant and the hard drive powers up but does NOT spin-up
and appears to have FAILED.
The HDD appears FAILED in Windows 7, Windows 8.1, Windows 10.
A Linux system on the SAME MB is capable of seeing the drive and with the
hdparm command, to change the feature from Enabled to Disabled, thus,
restoring the drive to full functionallity without any data loss.
NOW, will the Windows 10 programmers ever see this or take any action on it or not.
There is apparently no way to attach anything into the Windows Feedback section.

WightWalker said:

Thanks for the above information.

I am right to understand that if the HDs haven't been jumpered to enable PUIS (default settings) with MBs that don't support PUIS, then this problem should not affect those users.

I assume that problem isn't relevant to SSDs as they have no platters to spin up, but believe that some users have experienced failuer probles.

I'm not sure about other drive manufacturers, however, with Seagate, I have no jumpers installed (and no info about how to jumper them) and the Win 10 build is still "enabling" the Power-up In Standby feature which "enables" the feature on the HDD, which powers up the drive, but does not allow it to spin up with my MB which DOES NOT support it.
Microsoft needs to fix this so that other users are not affected no matter what HDD/SSD-Motherboard combination they have.
Again to emphasize, it is the MS Operating system that is at fault here.
Finally to emphasize again what my previous post says, "In order for this feature to work, 3 things are necessary: 1) Motherboard which supports it, 2) HDD/SSD that supports it and 3) Operating System that supports it" ALL 3 are needed!
If I understand your post correctly, if you have a drive that must be jumpered to ALLOW the drive to use the feature, then, it might not matter what the OS tries to do, BUT, That could be wrong also!

MS appears to have listened and fixed this issue!
The "Windows Technical Preview December Update for x64-based systems (KB3021937)" patch appears to address exactly this issue: Windows 10 Technical Preview or Windows Server Technical Preview cannot resume from sleep or cannot start
After applying the patch, I re-installed one of the affected drives (ST1000DM003) in each of my 2 test machines.
After verifying that both drives were recognized and that a text file on each drive could be opened, I did the following process 10 times each:
--------
Shut the machine down (power off)
Power up, boot up the systems
verify the drive is still there
open the text file on the drives.
--------
On one of my systems, this issue had presented itself every time it was shut down.

wards242 said:

Thankyou BillyBob and gregrocker for you comments.
I tried all that with the Hitachi on USB and separate power on my other PC to no avail. I will not try 9879 and wait for the next release and install when it is considerate to be stable.
As a Win 8.1 user, Windows 10 looks great - just needs the bugs sorting.

I have more the less the same problem as reported by the OP. I believe it is the Win 10 trying to update after being shut down. The worst part is that I cannot disallow updating (choice greyed out). I have deleted Win 10 and I am to wait to get back in. Win 10 should allow choice of not updating indeed. That causes considerable problem by opening halfway the other harddrives.

Daniel , Toronto

I am going to wait. I installed windows 10 (forgot build), then update to build 9879. Every thing was fine. Suddenly after the computer slept, there was an error message on my screen saying that recovery was needed. However, my windows 8.1 install was on one disk (SSD) and my other two disks contained Windows 10 and some backup data (2 separate SATA disks). The attempt at recovery with my USB drive allowed me to go back to windows 8.1 and what I then discovered was two dead hard drives -- neither of which could be re-formatted, initialized or anything! So, I am going to wait to see what happens next. I have a separate install on a laptop computer with dual boot of windows 7 and Windows 10. The upgrade to windows 10 build 9879 was successful and has not crashed the computer. This time, the drive is a partitioned SSD drive being shared by Windows 7 and Windows 10. I will see what happens with this.

magilla said:

I am going to wait. I installed windows 10 (forgot build), then update to build 9879. Every thing was fine. Suddenly after the computer slept, there was an error message on my screen saying that recovery was needed. However, my windows 8.1 install was on one disk (SSD) and my other two disks contained Windows 10 and some backup data (2 separate SATA disks). The attempt at recovery with my USB drive allowed me to go back to windows 8.1 and what I then discovered was two dead hard drives -- neither of which could be re-formatted, initialized or anything! So, I am going to wait to see what happens next. I have a separate install on a laptop computer with dual boot of windows 7 and Windows 10. The upgrade to windows 10 build 9879 was successful and has not crashed the computer. This time, the drive is a partitioned SSD drive being shared by Windows 7 and Windows 10. I will see what happens with this.

You have the same problem I reported. I reinstalled Win 10 and that revived the lost hd. Then I have deleted it entirely hoping later build will cure the "lost hard drive" issue

Daniel

dtong22 said:

magilla said:

I am going to wait. I installed windows 10 (forgot build), then update to build 9879. Every thing was fine. Suddenly after the computer slept, there was an error message on my screen saying that recovery was needed. However, my windows 8.1 install was on one disk (SSD) and my other two disks contained Windows 10 and some backup data (2 separate SATA disks). The attempt at recovery with my USB drive allowed me to go back to windows 8.1 and what I then discovered was two dead hard drives -- neither of which could be re-formatted, initialized or anything! So, I am going to wait to see what happens next. I have a separate install on a laptop computer with dual boot of windows 7 and Windows 10. The upgrade to windows 10 build 9879 was successful and has not crashed the computer. This time, the drive is a partitioned SSD drive being shared by Windows 7 and Windows 10. I will see what happens with this.

You have the same problem I reported. I reinstalled Win 10 and that revived the lost hd. Then I have deleted it entirely hoping later build will cure the "lost hard drive" issue

Daniel

My hard drives will not be recognized by my system bios now! They are seen by bios and reported as I/o error's, then Windows 8 will not initialize or format or anything else.