Hi,

I have added a HDD to the computer (actually replaced an old one which failed). It is second hand, but there is nothing wrong with the HDD, formatting went OK, also did a check with "HD Tune" and no errors were detected, all SMART readings are OK... I think there is a setting somewhere in Windows which I need to track down to resolve this issue...

I can see the new HDD in Disk Management, there is no letter allocated and consequently it is not shown in Explorer, and other programs cannot find it. I can allocate a letter (D:) , all starts to behave normal, the disk is now visible to all applications. After a restart, the disk becomes again "invisible", as there is no drive letter allocated anymore, like it forgot that I allocated a drive letter already. I re-allocate the letter and everything runs normal. Until the next restart...

Below is a screenshot of the Disk Management - see DISK 2, that is the one with the issue.

It shows "active" and the others drives (which behave as they should) do not show that, so I wonder if that is the cause? I recall that during formatting there was an option to set as active and I might have selected that? Or I might be wrong...

anyway... the intention is to preserve the data. I can copy everything on another HDD (temporarily), then format and put the data back onto the drive. I would really, really like to avoid that process if possible (it involves removing a HDD from another computer, which has the necessary available space on it, etc).

Many thanks.