Windows 10: HDD missing in Win10, present in Win7

Hi guys,

I hung out a lot in the 7 and 8 forums, but my first time here.... Strange problem plaguing my otherwise dependable system.

Win 10 boots from a Samsung SSD, while win 7 boots from a 1 TB seagate HDD. Lately, this 1TB HDD is simply not detected when booting into Win 10. Around every 5-6 boots it is detected, but then is prone to dropping out later. No sign of it in Disk Management, diskpart, and Device Manager.No events that mention anything.

Problem is, when I boot into win 7, everything is absolutely perfect. This leads me to think that it's not a hardware problem. But it shows none of the usual signs of hardware miscommunication or driver issues.

Help needed guys. How should I diagnose and fix this issue? Let me know what info could be helpful...

Thanks in advance.

Bump.... Guys? Anyone?

In device manager, what do you have showing up under IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers?

It shows only Intel(R) ICH10R SATA AHCI Controller. The "disks" heading should have had one more entry like ST31000524AS.

When I started Windows 10, the disk was detected. I rebooted to check... but it dropped out after a couple of reboots.

So, it looks like you have an SSD and two hard drives installed? I would take the data cables to the two hard drives and swap them at the hard drive connections. If the problem stays the same, then you know to start looking at the hard drive as the problem. If the problem moves to the other hard drive then you know the problem is either the motherboard, the cable itself, or the connection between the motherboard and the cable. If the problem goes away, then you know it was just the connection between the cable and the hard drive.

Unfortunately, the problem did recur after a couple of days; with the other drive! Then I knew that it was the cable. So then I restored the original cable-HDD configuration but changed the motherboard SATA port that the troubled HDD's cable was connected to. The problem recurred on the same (original HDD), thus confirming that the cable was definitely the issue.

I have now swapped out the troublesome cable with a new one.... waiting and watching for a few more days.