Windows 10: Lost hard drives

I have a somewhat complicated set up with two computers, a main and the backup, and a large number of peripherals that are attached to switches to move them between the two computers. The problem I have is on my main computer and concerns three USB external hard drives. They started dropping out about a week ago, one or two or all, and now all have dropped out completely. The three are plugged into a USB three switch and all three work on my backup computer and none show up on my main computer. USB pen drives show up on both computers. I have unplugged the external hard drives from the switch and plug them into two external hubs plugged into the main computer and they don't show up. The pen drives plugged into the same USB ports show up. I have plugged the external drives directly into the computer and they don't show up. I have plugged in the pen drives into the same ports and they show up.

The external drives do not show up in either the disk manager or device manager. I have checked the power managers and disabled any power savers.

I am at and absolute loss as to where to go from here. All the hardware been checked out work except for the drives themselves in the main computer. Everything works in the backup.HELP

:)

 

Lost data from hard drive, what to do now?

Well, I'm sorry to hear that it's a WD My Passport that failed on you, @tomhenry ! *Frown
I'd recommend you to try using a different USB cable with it and see if that will help your system to detect it without it disconnecting.
I'd also suggest you to go to Disk Management and see how the drive is listed there. It won't hurt to check up on the health and SMART status of the HDD by running the QUICK and EXTENDED tests from the WD's Data LifeGuard Diagnostics. Here's a link to the available software: http://products.wdc.com/support/kb.ashx?id=11ZOpD

Give these troubleshooting steps a try and keep us posted with the results!
SuperSoph_WD

 

Overclock your hard drive!!!

Heres a much easier hack that I realized quite a few years ago that really does work!

REQUIREMENTS:

• Hard drive with molex power connection.
• PSU with more than 1 strand that has molex plugs on it.
• Wire strippers, soldering iron if you're fancy, electrical tape if you're not.

STEPS:

• Take the strand of connectors from your PSU, and decide which one will be the donator for this overclocking adventure.
• Cut the yellow and orange cables, then twist them together.
• Find the power connector you've chosen as the overclocking connector, and release the orange cable from the connector. Now use your preferred method to bind them together, then place it back together.
• Plug in a drive and feel the speed!

Congratulations! You've just overclocked your hard drive!

 

Hard drive/ OS issue

a guy suggested :

• shutdown
• unhooked HDD
• restarted
• yay !!
• reconnected HDD
• restarted
• yay !!

also , try method 3
How do I unlock the drive where Windows 10 is installed?