Dell Studio 1735 - Missing Hard Drive

Guest · Jan 20, 2014

Hello Tom's

My Dell Studio Laptop has 500GB of combined storage from two 250GB Hard Drives but I am currently only able to access and store data on one of them. Device Manager detects both drives but I am unable to see or access the drive anywhere in Windows, which tells me I have a maximum capacity of 250GB

Is there anyway I can find and gain access to this secondary drive?

Thanks in advance,
Conor

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Update:
-Both drives visible in BIOS
-Both drives visible in Device Manager
-Both drives visible through Intel Matrix Storage Console
-Second drive not visible in Disk Management

Having viewed this thread - http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/265764-32-guide-installed-disk-system - I decided to boot my old Drivers & Utilities disk and installed all SATA related drivers to no avail.

Getting pretty stumped now :-(

Phillip Corcoran · Jan 21, 2014

Look in Disk Management to see if that drive just needs a letter assigning to it.
Right-click on the drive ribbon for a menu of tasks you can perform on the drive.

Guest · Jan 21, 2014

Hey Phillip,
Thanks for your response!

In Disk Management I can only see my C: Drive (232GB) There are definitely two drives in the system. I have had access to the later previously.

As a side note, Device Manager cannot detect the volume of the second drive.

Since the drive is visible in both the BIOS and Device Manager, but not in Disk Management I think I might be missing a SATA Driver or something along those lines. When I get home from college I'll find the Driver disk and see what I can find

Guest · Mar 28, 2014

Hello Toms.
I apologies for posting in this thread but I am yet to receive any replies after over a month here on the forums, I really could do with a solution as I am quickly running out of storage space as I use the system quite a lot for college related work.

Thanks,
Conor

2Be_or_Not2Be · Mar 28, 2014

Did you determine if a partition existed on that 2nd drive? Without a partition and no format, then you wouldn't be able to access it.

In Disk Management, what does it say?

Guest · Mar 28, 2014

2Be_or_Not2Be :

Thanks for the response,
The second drive is not visible at all in Disk Management but does show up in both the BIOS and Device Manager

2Be_or_Not2Be · Mar 28, 2014

Well, first confirm in your BIOS setup that you don't have a RAID-1 array setup, and that it is set up as AHCI.

Then go into Disk Management, right-click on it, and choose the option to "Rescan all disks". Also refresh it.

Secondarily, you could also go into Device Manager, open Disk Drives, and then remove that drive that isn't appearing. Then restart your PC and see if Windows detects it again, and it's visible in Disk Management.

Guest · Mar 30, 2014

2Be_or_Not2Be :

Hey,
Thanks again for your responses, your help really is appreciated.

Anyways, I tried both of your suggestions:
- The BIOS can only be set to ATA and AHCI and it is currently set to its default, AHCI.
- Rescanning and refreshing the Disk Management page had no effect.
- Uninstalling the second drive via Device Manager and restarted had no effect.

2Be_or_Not2Be · Mar 31, 2014

There could other items blocking access to the drive. For example, that 2nd drive could be of the SED (Self-Encrypting Drive) type, and you don't have the password for it. It could also have been the mirror in a RAID-1 array. Maybe you have an issue with it being GPT and your system being MBR, and somehow it's not recognizing it properly.

If you're running Windows 7, try dropping to a command prompt as an Administrator and then running DISKPART. AT the DISKPART> prompt, type "LIST DISK". See if you get any identifying info on the 2nd drive. If you do, then go ahead & see if you can clean it out. First "SELECT DISK #" where # is the 2nd disk, likely DISK 1. Then type "CLEAN" to clean the drive. This will wipe the drive, so don't do this if you're trying to rescue any data on it. When the disk is cleaned, then you should be able to exit out and then view the drive in Disk Management.

If you can't see anything with DISKPART, then you are probably at the point where you need to pull the 2nd drive out and attach it to another PC. See if the other machine can recognize it. If you're at the college, you likely can take it to someone in the MIS/IT Dept.

Finally, as an alternative, 2.5" laptop drives are fairly cheap. It might just be easier to buy a 1TB 2.5" laptop drive from Newegg for $60, move all of your data to it, and just forget about the 250GB drives.

Guest · Apr 2, 2014

2Be_or_Not2Be :

There could other items blocking access to the drive. For example, that 2nd drive could be of the SED (Self-Encrypting Drive) type, and you don't have the password for it. It could also have been the mirror in a RAID-1 array. Maybe you have an issue with it being GPT and your system being MBR, and somehow it's not recognizing it properly.

If you're running Windows 7, try dropping to a command prompt as an Administrator and then running DISKPART. AT the DISKPART> prompt, type "LIST DISK". See if you get any identifying info on the 2nd drive. If you do, then go ahead & see if you can clean it out. First "SELECT DISK #" where # is the 2nd disk, likely DISK 1. Then type "CLEAN" to clean the drive. This will wipe the drive, so don't do this if you're trying to rescue any data on it. When the disk is cleaned, then you should be able to exit out and then view the drive in Disk Management.

If you can't see anything with DISKPART, then you are probably at the point where you need to pull the 2nd drive out and attach it to another PC. See if the other machine can recognize it. If you're at the college, you likely can take it to someone in the MIS/IT Dept.

Finally, as an alternative, 2.5" laptop drives are fairly cheap. It might just be easier to buy a 1TB 2.5" laptop drive from Newegg for $60, move all of your data to it, and just forget about the 250GB drives.

DISKPART wasn't able to detect the Disk either so I'll go ahead and stick a new drive in I think, it didn't occur to me how cheap they are.

Thanks again for all your help,
Conor

Search

Dell Studio 1735 - Missing Hard Drive

Guest

Guest

Phillip Corcoran

Titan

Guest

Guest

Guest

Guest

2Be_or_Not2Be

Distinguished

Guest

Guest

2Be_or_Not2Be

Distinguished

Guest

Guest

2Be_or_Not2Be

Distinguished

Guest

Guest

TRENDING THREADS

Latest posts

Moderators online

Share this page