Disappearing SATA drives

I recently reistalled Windows 10 ( 64bit) onto a new SATA SSD drive in my PC . I had a need to change from old Windows 10 32bit format to 64bit format . Since the new SSD drive is small is small I kept my existing 2 number 2GB SATA mechanical hard drives for file / folder storage for videos, photos etc.in my PC. I also have some USB portable drives attached. The 2 HDDs were reformatted and file folders reinstalled .
My problem started when I set library folders in Window 10 C drive ( SSD) to link to the folders in 2GB drives.
This worked fine for a period but now the 2GB drives have completely disappeared.The USB drives are visible but not 2 internal SATA hard drives.
I have tried all the usual things like restarting, reinstalling WIN10 and even changed the SATA cables and swapped round the drives to different SATA ports on my motherboard.
I am now in process of removing bitlocker encryption from one of my USB drives prior to resetting or finally removing TPM module from motherboard to see if that cures issue.
Any other suggestions/recommendations/advice welcome
Bob

Do the drives show up in the BIOS? If not, you may have a hardware problem.

What about Disk Management or Device Manager. Do the drives show there?

You can find a few suggestions in this thread: https://forums.tomshardware.com/threads/hdd-shows-up...

Edited by TinyMongomery (Sat 26-Feb-22 10:10:06)

Currently not showing in BIOS but have been showing intermitently. Same with Disk Management and Device Manager. the intermittent nature leads me to believe that it is software related not that both drives would fail at same time. I also had a time when only one showed in BIOS and not same one .

The fact that the problem appears in the BIOS would make me think it is not a software problem (unless the BIOS has been corrupted - you could try refreshing the BIOS to eliminate that possibility). But it could be a hardware failure with the SATA ports on your m/b. Or even a PSU issue.

Have you tried with just one of the hard drives, with and/or without the SSD. Try both combinations using the same SATA port, which might eliminate that as the cause. If the problem only appears with all 3 drives connected then it could be the PSU. PSU issues are notoriously difficult to track down as they can cause completely unpredictable behaviour.

Do both disks use the same connection to the PSU? Is there another one you could try?

That sounds like some sort of low-level SATA device conflict or intermittent hardware fault as said. Either way it’s not a good foundation for success.

Personally I wouldn’t keep the old mechanical drives in a live system that you depend on / splitting system files and libraries over. You could be long chasing an intermittent fault for the sake of 4GB of slow old spinning storage…