Hard Drive unrecognized after booting from a flash drive

[Nshenderson]

My third hard Drive is unrecognized by windows after I booted Solus from a flash drive I have replugged satas and power connectors and the drive still remains unrecognized it holds all of my games so I would appreciate any help thanks.

[TheDelphiDude]

Since the harddisk shows up in device management I assume it's also recognized in the BIOS.
 

My guess is that either your harddisk no longer has a partition which is recognized by Windows, or there is no longer a drive letter assigned to it. Press windows key + R, type diskmgmt.msc and press Enter.

 

If a popup asks you to initialize a disk, click cancel, and close disk management. You'll need to use a recovery tool to get back your files.

 

On the bottom pane there is a grid with harddisks and partitions. There should be one which is listed as disk x, with a list of partition(s) next to it. If there is a partition that has no drive letter (something like NewVolume rather than NewVolume (H:)), click the partition, then right click, and click "change driveletter and paths". Click "Add...", select a drive letter and click Ok. If all else goes well, you should have your files back. However, if Windows pops up with a message stating that the partition with the drive letter you just assigned needs formatting, click cancel. This too means you'll need a recovery tool to get back your files.

[Nshenderson]

20 hours ago, TheDelphiDude said:

Since the harddisk shows up in device management I assume it's also recognized in the BIOS.
 

My guess is that either your harddisk no longer has a partition which is recognized by Windows, or there is no longer a drive letter assigned to it. Press windows key + R, type diskmgmt.msc and press Enter.

 

If a popup asks you to initialize a disk, click cancel, and close disk management. You'll need to use a recovery tool to get back your files.

 

On the bottom pane there is a grid with harddisks and partitions. There should be one which is listed as disk x, with a list of partition(s) next to it. If there is a partition that has no drive letter (something like NewVolume rather than NewVolume (H:)), click the partition, then right click, and click "change driveletter and paths". Click "Add...", select a drive letter and click Ok. If all else goes well, you should have your files back. However, if Windows pops up with a message stating that the partition with the drive letter you just assigned needs formatting, click cancel. This too means you'll need a recovery tool to get back your files.

So when I do this that option is unavailable to me I have found the drive in the manager however it shows up with a blank name. When I go to set a path it doesn't allow that option.Thanks again for helping me @TheDelphiDude

 

[TheDelphiDude]

It looks as though the partition has been formatted with something other than FAT or NTFS. Notice how the ones with drive letters assigned are listed as NTFS.

You could try EaseUS Partition Master (see below), but I'm afraid Solus did something to your HDD's partition table rendering it unusable under Windows. Notice how there is also a <4 GB partition as well? I doubt it was there before.

I'd recommend trying some form of file recovery before doing anything else, but I'd prepare for the first, ie, having to download and reinstall all your games again.

EaseUS Partition Master:

https://www.easeus.com/partition-master/fix-unable-to-change-letter-nor-assign-drive-letter.html

https://www.easeus.com/partition-manager/epm-free.html

[TechyBen]

Testdisk is also helpful for finding partition recovery options for Windows partitioned NTFS drives.

 

https://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk

 

Use it to view only if you just wish to check on drive/file integrity.