As per the title, my hard drive has disappeared. I assume it is just broken but am still clinging on to the dwindling hope that a) it is not; and/or b) that I might be able to recover the data/replace it.
Here is the background: I have a Dell G3 laptop (it's about two years old). The other day I was getting a lot of 'unexpected store exception' blue screen errors so I googled around and tried to sort it out by running checkdisk, running the windows virus scan, running Dell's diagnostic tools, and trying to install all Windows updates. I didn't find any viruses; it kept blue-screening before I could download all updates; the Dell tool was unable to install recommended driver updates, and the checkdisk scan just stopped halfway through scanning my data disk (d. Then I read somewhere to disable fast startup so I did that and the problems seemed to go away - no more blue screens.
But then the next day, my d: drive was completely missing from file manager. It just lists my c: drive with 128GB capacity. In device manager it lists a single hard disk - SanDisk X600 M.2 2280 SATA 128GB. The disk management utility lists four unnamed disks (EFI system partition and three recovery partitions) of 650mb, 990mb, 11.33gb, and 1.14gb sizes; then the OS disck (c with 120GB of capacity.
When I run the UEFI tool the device information lists the Primary HDD as 1000 GB WL1FWWSG; then M.2 SATA as 128 GB 182003A01215.
(I restored fast startup and the disk is still not visible.)
As per advice on the internet, I tried running sfc /scannow and Dism.exe /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth, and then I updated Windows successfully using Windows update assistant.
Now, whenever I start my computer I get a 'fixing (d stage 1...' screen, but the disk still doesn't show up, but now I am getting messages from Intel Rapid Storage Technology saying 'SATA available disk: Removed'.
I have not since used my computer in case starting it up will make it more likely to corrupt the hard drive or anything.
Does anybody know of any other steps I can do to fix this, or is it a lost cause? (I have yet to unscrew the laptop to check connections etc. because I wanted to leave that as a last resort).
Any advice gratefully received!
Here is the background: I have a Dell G3 laptop (it's about two years old). The other day I was getting a lot of 'unexpected store exception' blue screen errors so I googled around and tried to sort it out by running checkdisk, running the windows virus scan, running Dell's diagnostic tools, and trying to install all Windows updates. I didn't find any viruses; it kept blue-screening before I could download all updates; the Dell tool was unable to install recommended driver updates, and the checkdisk scan just stopped halfway through scanning my data disk (d. Then I read somewhere to disable fast startup so I did that and the problems seemed to go away - no more blue screens.
But then the next day, my d: drive was completely missing from file manager. It just lists my c: drive with 128GB capacity. In device manager it lists a single hard disk - SanDisk X600 M.2 2280 SATA 128GB. The disk management utility lists four unnamed disks (EFI system partition and three recovery partitions) of 650mb, 990mb, 11.33gb, and 1.14gb sizes; then the OS disck (c with 120GB of capacity.
When I run the UEFI tool the device information lists the Primary HDD as 1000 GB WL1FWWSG; then M.2 SATA as 128 GB 182003A01215.
(I restored fast startup and the disk is still not visible.)
As per advice on the internet, I tried running sfc /scannow and Dism.exe /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth, and then I updated Windows successfully using Windows update assistant.
Now, whenever I start my computer I get a 'fixing (d stage 1...' screen, but the disk still doesn't show up, but now I am getting messages from Intel Rapid Storage Technology saying 'SATA available disk: Removed'.
I have not since used my computer in case starting it up will make it more likely to corrupt the hard drive or anything.
Does anybody know of any other steps I can do to fix this, or is it a lost cause? (I have yet to unscrew the laptop to check connections etc. because I wanted to leave that as a last resort).
Any advice gratefully received!