D: (data) drive disappeared

Question

Inspiron 7577 C: 256Gb solid state drive, D : 1Tb 'regular' drive, 2.5 yo First time this happened was about two weeks ago. My noticed that D drive was gone. Rebooted, drive D came back, everything normal.  Second time it happened this morning. Rebooted, drive D came back, installed and ran DiskCheckup, and it came back with no errors. About an hour later D disappeared again, did not come back. BIOS does not see it, but no errors. PC boots fine because C: works.  I am thinking, it's a hardware failure, possibly, SATA cable. Temperature of the D drive was 30C when tested by the DiskCheckup. What would be your order of things to check?

ejn63 · Answer

First: If you don't have a backup of the drive, make it as soon as you see it re-appear.

Unplug the system, disconnect the battery and hold the power button for 30 sec. Remove and reinstall the drive.

See if it's then seen. If it is, back it up! Then run an extended diagnostic on it (F12 at powerup).

Trans-Siberian · Answer

Thanks. I will probably pull the HDD out and back it up manually. I have a backup, but there is day of work or so that I don't have  backed up (and I charge by the hour, so that kind of ). I was not able to remove the back cover, but I am getting some help here. The plan is look inside, reattach the cable if loose, if not, get a 1Tb SSD, and I already have a kit to connect the HDD to a computer and get the data from it.

ladydukes · Answer

I have this issue but I am on an all-in-one computer, not a laptop

Inspiron

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