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NVMe Drives completely disappeared after working for 5 months

Anonymous
2021-05-10T04:35:13+00:00

I have 2 Sabrent Rocket NVMe drives that have been working completely fine. The other night I hit "Update and Shut Down" and went to bed. When I woke up the next morning and powered on my PC, the NVMe drives no longer showed in windows.

Both drives still appear in the motherboard BIOS, but do not exist in Disk Management. I believe they are showing in Device Manager as "Unknown Device."

I've tried removing 1 or both drives, swapping places, using a 3rd M.2 slot, running Windows Update again, uninstalling recent updates, searching for drivers, updating BIOS and Firmware of my hardware. 

Both drives pass a self test with no issue in the Bios. Both drives have only been in use about 5 months.

Any help? Do I  need to reinstall windows?

Windows for home | Windows 10 | Files, folders, and storage

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Anonymous
2021-05-10T05:34:55+00:00

Hi FW. I'm Greg, an Independent Advisor.

Open the Unknown Devices in Device Manager, from Driver tab choose Uninstall, restart PC to reinstall drivers, restart PC to reinstall the drivers.

See if drives now appear in Disk Mgmt to assign a drive letter.

If not choose Action Tab and Rescan Disks.

In Device Manager check under Disk Drives for the drives, then from Action tab choose Scan for Hardware Changes.

See other fixes for NVMe data drives disappear after WIndows Update:

You said both drives pass self-test in BIOS. How about the Sabrent Rocket Control Panel to check drive health:

https://www.sabrent.com/rocket-control-panel/

If less than a year old you still have a warranty on the drives. Have their Support help you test and if necessary RMA them. It may be a known issue:

https://www.sabrent.com/downloads/

You can also do a Repair Install which reinstalls Windows while keeping your files, apps and most settings in place, brings you up to the latest version and solves most problems: https://www.yourwindowsguide.com/2016/06/how-to...

To do the Repair Install create the latest bootable media following the steps toward the bottom of the download page here in the section "Using the tool to create installation media:"

https://www.microsoft.com/en-US/software-downlo.... Open Media and right click Setup to Run as Administrator.

If that doesn't help then use the media to do a gold standard Clean Install in this link which compiles the best possible Install of Windows which will stay that way as long as you stick with the tools and methods given, has zero reported problems, and is better than any amount of money could buy: http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wiki...

I hope this helps. Feel free to ask back any questions and keep me posted. I will keep working with you until it's resolved.

______________________________________________

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  1. Anonymous
    2021-05-11T15:17:44+00:00

    Thanks for the info.   I pretty much tried all of these things. Ultimately I did have to do a full clean install of windows, as nothing else caught even a glimmer of the two drives. Fortunately, the clean install worked and the drives are back and fully visible. No data loss on those drives, no errors, so yay!

    for what it's worth in case anyone else stumbles on this, here's what I tried (that didn't work):

    -uninstalling device drivers 
    -converting windows installation hard drive to GPT  in order to disable CSM in the bios 
    -installing the Sabrent control panel, which didn't see the drives in windows either
    -ensuring BIOS settings for drives were correct

    -Contacting Sabrent support (they did not tell me of any known issues)
    -Removing both drives, trying one at a time, trying them in different M.2 slots
    -Switching out the graphics card which was the latest hardware change (the drives had worked fine with the new card but I figured try anything)
    -Doing a "repair" install of Windows

    I'll probably end up getting an external M.2 enclosure so if this happens in the future i'll still have quick access to the drives and be able to verify the data is there and the drive is functioning.

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  2. Anonymous
    2021-05-11T18:18:01+00:00

    Thanks for reporting back to help others. I'm glad at least the Clean Install worked for you.

    If you want to report this to Microsoft use the Feedback Hub app in Start Menu where developers are tasked to process consumer feedback. They will not even see it here. This is a tech forums staffed mostly by volunteers trying to help others with your problems.

    If you want to post back a Share link from your Feedback here others who see this thread can vote it up and add to it.

    Let me know if there's anything else.

    Also when ready please mark the post which helped most as the Answer (or Resolved), to help others. A rating is also appreciated.

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