Drive D missing on heavy load

hard drivewindowswindows 10

I have an ASUS laptop running Windows 10 with two disk drive (1 @ 500GB SSD and 1 @ 1TB HDD). The Windows OS is installed on C drive (SSD), while games and personal data are installed and stored in D drive (HDD).

A few weeks ago, I realized the drive reading process suddenly slowed down when I browse my files in Windows Explorer, and recently, my D drive would suddenly unreadable (totally missing) under these condition:

  1. Playing games. Suddenly the game stopped completely, and when I checked on Windows Explorer, the D drive is not there.
  2. File transfer. I tried to backup my files in case of hardware failure. When the file copying is still in progress, suddenly an error appeared, indicating that the files I tried to copy is no longer there.
  3. Anything that cause a heavy load on D drive.

Every time I restarted my laptop, the D drive will appear again, however it goes undetected again under the conditions I described above. For additional notes:

  • The latest "Cumulative Updates for Windows" is installed on 14 July 2021.
  • Windows is updated regularly, yet it never cause any problems on my laptop.
  • Regarding the hardware condition, this laptop is about 3 years old, and I never encountered any hardware failure.

What I have done:

  1. Tried to check for disk error using CHKDSK command on Command Prompt, but no bad sector detected.
  2. Rescan drives on Disk Management, yet the D drive still won't appear.
  3. Checked on Device Manager, and the hard drive is not detected on Disk drive tab.

Full specs:

  • Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-8750H CPU @ 2.20GHz 2.21 GHz
  • RAM: 32 GB
  • VGA: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080
  • Windows: Windows 10 Home Single Language, version: 20H2

I'm literally going crazy here since I also need this laptop for work purpose, and it's difficult to get hardware support on local stores in my area under extended lockdown situation. If possible, I wanted to look for any software related solutions before coming to hardware failure conclusion.

EDIT:
Screenshot from Speccy – 1

Screenshot from Speccy – 2

Best Answer

Your disk may be dying - save your data and replace it.

The SMART data shows a high Reallocated Sectors Count value of 1,744.

This parameter is defined as:

Reallocated Sectors Count S.M.A.R.T. parameter indicates the count of reallocated sectors (512 bytes). When the hard drive finds a read/write/verification error, it marks this sector as "reallocated" and transfers data to a special reserved area (spare area).

This is a critical parameter. Degradation of this parameter may indicate imminent drive failure. Urgent data backup and hardware replacement is recommended.

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