Windows 10: Missing D: drive

Hello,

I have tried to get assistance over the phone from both Microsoft support and Dell support, but each of these methods require payment that I just can't afford at this time. I am hopeful someone here may have some experience with this problem I am having and at least give me some piece of mind as to why it is happening in the first place. Before I begin, I will confirm that my operating system is Windows 10 and my laptop make is a Dell Inspiron 15 7000 Gaming.


For the second time in four months I have had a problem with my system's D: drive inexplicably disappearing. In both cases, I was running a program located on my D: drive when it suddenly stopped responding, closed off on its own and would not relaunch. When I tried to reopen the program (or any program installed on that drive), I was notified that the "pathway" could not be found or that the program itself was not installed. Both times when this has happened I went to "This PC" to check under Devices and Drives, and only the C: drive was listed. Likewise, when I went to Device Manager and looked under Disk drives, the D: drive was nowhere to be found.

I have tried running troubleshooters, running a diagnostics scan, updating my drives, running Windows Update and then rebooting, but whenever this occurs the only thing that seems to work is shutting the computer down for a while and then rebooting. The strangest thing is that when the computer is running normally and I go to run a health check, nothing comes up as failing or needing attention; my system appears to be in perfect health!


So this is what I would like to know:

1. What is causing the D: drive to inexplicably vanish while I'm using it? Could the program I am running be the cause?
2. Why can't my system find the D: drive even after I run a diagnostics or troubleshooter?
3. Why does leaving the computer off for 10-20 minutes and rebooting fix the problem, but a quick reboot does nothing?
4. Is there anything I can do to prevent this from happening again?

Thanks for any help you can give!

:)

 

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.

 

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 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?