Windows 10: D-drive missing after Windows Quality Update

I have a Dell G7 laptop with Win10 on the C-drive solid-state drive, SSD and a separate D-drive spinning HDD for data, files, etc. The C-drive is nearly full, so all of my documents are on the D-drive. Last night the laptop did a forced reboot after installing the KB5001028 quality update, and suddenly the D-drive disappeared. I tried uninstalling the update, ran the Windows troubleshooter, scandisk, device manager, disk management, etc., no joy. The drive literally disappeared from the OS - it's not in device manager, disk management, I can't find it in a command prompt or powershell. I checked the BIOS and made sure the D-drive was not disabled somehow - both Disk0 C-drive and Disk1 D-drive are enabled in BIOS, but the D-drive has just vanished from within the OS - only Disk0 appears in any of the control panel widgets. I even took the back off the laptop to check cable connections, etc., but everything looked fine and still no D-drive after putting it back together.


Earlier today I connected an external USB hard drive to the laptop - this drive was mapped as D. Sometime later the old D-drive suddenly re-appeared in Windows Explorer as the E-drive, with all files apparently intact. I disconnected the external drive and re-installed the quality update and rebooted - the drive was still there, now mapped as the E-drive. But then a little while later the E-drive disappeared again.


I'm completely baffled - I guess it *could* be some intermittent failure in the drive hardware, but I can't even run a diagnostic on it since it's just gone. It doesn't show up in device manager, so i can't update or re-install the driver. In disk management I tried to rescan for drives but it doesn't appear - only Disk0 shows up. I'm suspicious of the Windows update - I've checked online but found no reports of problems with this particular update.

Why would the drive just disappear completely from the OS, and then reappear? One last thing - the update originally failed to install because the C-drive was too full, but it forced a reboot anyway. Could that have caused the issue somehow?

:)

 

windows 10 missing D: drive

Hello Jean,

We realize the inconvenience you are experiencing with missing D: drive from your system. We will certainly help you.

We suggest you to kindly follow the suggestion from the below link and check if it helps:

D drive missing after Windows 10 upgrade

Let us know the results. We will be happy to assists you further.

Thank you.

 

D drive

Hi,

Based on the details you have provided us, it appears that there might be some corrupted contents on the said partition. We can also consider that this is caused by a virus.

For us to check if a certain virus is hiding your files, kindly follow the steps below:

• Type Command prompt in the search bar.
• Type-in the following command:
  
  attrib -h -r -s /s /d D:\*.*
• Press Enter to execute the command.

If you think that there is nothing important stored in it, then we suggest that you reformat your D drive so that you can use the free space for important files.

You can follow the steps below to start with the process:

• Click on the File Explorer.
• Select This PC.
• Right-click on your D drive, then click on Format.
• Follow the on-screen process to finish formatting the partition.

Let us know how it goes so that we can further assist you.

 

D drive missing

HI,

After windows 10 update my D drive is missing. And it works fine if I change the drive letter. But the weird issue is the system shows C and D drives as the same drive.( A new D drive got created and is same as C drive). How do I delete this unnecessary
D drive?