Screwed up second physical hard drive - why?

[speedracer]

Hello all. I did a new installation of win 11 on an ssd drive. I also have a second physical hard drive that is my DATA drive. It has been working flawlessly until a few days ago when it did an update and when it was done and rebooted it saw my separate drive letter but could not access it. I did a 'chkdsk' and after a couple of hours it was working with the system. However, after this, a number of the folders now had padlocks where none were previously there. I finally got those taken care. Bottom line, I don't want to keep 'losing' my data drive every time Win 11 does an update. ANY ideas on how to prevent this from happening in the future? THANKS for any responses offered.

 

[WillieAnderson]

Second physical hard drive screwed up” can happen for several reasons. Here are the most common causes:

Connection Issues: Loose or damaged SATA/Power cables can cause the drive to malfunction or not be detected.

Drive Failure: The drive itself could be failing due to age, bad sectors, or hardware defects.

File System Corruption: Improper shutdowns, power loss, or unsafe removal can corrupt the drive’s file system.

Driver or Firmware Problems: Outdated or corrupted drivers or firmware can cause the drive to act up.

Partition Table or Boot Issues: If the drive’s partition table or MBR/GPT is damaged, it might not be accessible.

Virus or Malware: In rare cases, malware can corrupt or damage drives.

What to do:

Check physical connections inside the PC.

Run diagnostics tools (like CrystalDiskInfo, HDDScan).

Try connecting the drive to another PC or via USB adapter.

Use Windows Disk Management or Linux tools to check partitions.

Backup any important data ASAP if drive is accessible.

 

[herryjons]

You can check physical connections inside the PC.