Windows 10 - 6TB WD_BLACK HDD vanished during installation and isn't present now
Windows 10 - 6TB WD_BLACK HDD vanished during installation and isn't present now
Hello once more! I'm facing a problem with one of my hard drives after installing Windows 10. I switched to openSUSE Linux inside VirtualBox to practice, so I backed up my files and installed Windows on my machine. During the setup, an error appeared: the HDD can't have Windows installed. For those not familiar, Linux requires the /home partition to span the whole drive for bulk storage while the SSD serves as boot device. After clearing the partitions on the SSD, the HDD disappeared from my HD menu. I remained calm until after the Windows install finished. Using DiskPart and checking via HWinfo64, the drive wasn't listed, and its absence in BIOS was concerning. Updating Windows didn't help. I removed the SATA cable, rebooted through BIOS to confirm it wasn't present, tried powering down and repositioning the cable—nothing worked. I still haven’t removed the HDD to test via SATA wire, but I’m hesitant because it would require a major overhaul of my internal setup. To be clear, the drive functioned properly before switching platforms, and my BIOS is fully updated. Any suggestions? Let me know if you have ideas! Thanks for your help.
I haven't discovered a solution yet, but I'm certain I can spot the hard drive on my system. I started from a live Linux environment such as EndeavourOS and successfully wiped the XFS partition, which freed up the original openSUSE partition. However, it's still not visible in Windows or the MSI BIOS, though the drive appears correctly with the right space according to EndeavorOS.
Is the hard drive shaking? Can it be identified on a different machine?
Yes, it does vibrate. And I can now see the HDD! There's a slight problem however: the HDD can only be seen in AHCI mode of the MSI BIOS and if I switch it to RAID, it disappears. When I'm in AHCI mode, my SSD and the HDD appear as their model names (Samsung SSD 980 / WDC WD6003FZBX, etc) but when I switch to RAID, the HDD disappears and the SSD shows up as "AMD-RAID."
I resolved the problem by getting the HDD to appear in Windows 10, but I'm still using AHCI mode, which isn't ideal for multiple drives. The fix is done, though there might be challenges with combining an NVMe SSD and a SATA HDD in AHCI.