Adding A New Disk Through Disk Win 10 Disk Manager W/o Losing Data ?

Greetings Geeks -

I am almost home getting my computer up and running again. The last step is to force Windows 10 to recognize my secondary SATA drive through Disk Manager. I spent a few minutes poking around disk manager and it seemed to me that disk manager wants to format when the disk is recognized. Is this the case? Can I add the drive without losing the information? The drive has data on it that I would like to keep. I am going to give it another try this evening.

The setup drive in question is a Western Digital 1TB hard. Thank you for any help.

 

If Windows is asking you to format the drive, then something is wrong. That drive is not being recognize properly, typically suggesting a problem with that drive.

If there is data on it, formatting will most likely make it irretrievable permanently. Are you sure you installed it as a secondary drive? That is, not the "boot" drive?

 

Thank your for the reply, but the drive **should be fine**. I will diagnose it later to be sure. The drive contains data only, no OS installs. My problem could be something else, let me explain....

I have "Windows Boot Manager" appearing in my bios as an option. The boot drive will not appear in the boot options. It does register along with the second data drive in the "Advanced" + "Storage" area of the BIOS menu. Windows Disk Management recognizes both, but as I explained, wants to format the second data drive. It appears that the system boots in "UEFI" mode via system startup. I did some research, but UEFI is still a mystery to me. I have no idea exactly what it is and under what circumstances it should be used. So, could you explain UEFI to me? Should I change that to BIOS?

Suggestions?

 

"BIOS" has been around for decades. UEFI replaces BIOS on new motherboards. Windows 10 is designed to work with UEFI to provide advanced features, in particular, advanced security features. BIOS was great in its day, but that day is gone.

https://www.howtogeek.com/175649/what-you-need-to-know-about-using-uefi-instead-of-the-bios/

 

Thanks for the read - good stuff. Through research, your help, and working through my problems I have at least a working understanding of UEFI. I do have one more question though - can I switch from from UEFI back to BIOS without having to reinstall Windows 10 or cause more problems? Windows Disk Management wants to reformat my second hard drive to make it accessible and that is my data disk. I would like to verify if the UEFI is the issue. Can you confirm any of that?

Thank you for your help.

 

You should not have to reinstall Windows, but frankly, I cannot promise no problems. Part of reason for UEFI is to prevent a bad guy from stealing your computer, then connecting a boot drive to it so he can steal the data off your other drives.

 

Don't worry, I won't hold you to that!

Rough times continue - I can't install my video card drivers for my new to me video card hot rod. I am getting all kinds of errors. The good news is that others have had this problem, so I think I can sort this out. It will require a few visits to the Nvidia forums though. And the water main to my house from the outside just went up an hour ago. The county sewer crew just left and after an initial inspection they believe it is before the valve that leads to my house, so repairs are on them. I am afraid to leave my house now - bad mojo just keeps piling on. My wife just won $30 bucks on a scratch off lottery ticket, so I guess that is a positive. At times like this, I am thankful for fermented hops. What did Jefferson say "Beer is proof God wants us to be happy?"

Thanks for your help.

 

I have found with graphics card driver issues, totally uninstalling the old drivers first, then rebooting before installing the new often helps. If still no luck, I do a full graphics swap. By "full" I mean if I was using NVIDIA, I swap in an AMD card. If I was using AMD, I swap in a NVIDIA card. This forces Windows to totally overwrite files and reset all associations involving graphics to the different driver set. If you simply replace a NVIDIA with a new NVIDIA (or AMD with an AMD), some files and settings (which may be corrupt and causing problems) are left unchanged - at least that is my theory.

Then I go through the process in reverse to go back the first brand card again, once again forcing all files to be over-written and associations to be reset - hopefully this time without any corruptions. I don't know if that is what really happens, but I do know this process has worked for us on many occasions.

***

Good luck with your water main issue. BTW, I recommend you use your own main shut-off valve to stop the water coming into your house, as well as any individual valves to water filters, hot water heater, and ice makers until they fix the problem. You are still going to get dirt and muddy water but hopefully not as much into those appliances.

As for your beer is proof quote, it was attributed to Ben Franklin, not Thomas Jefferson. But even that was wrong - probably first mixed up by some beer or T-shirt company. The origin came from unknown sources but Ben did say something similar, though it was about wine. It was something like, "Rain on vineyards is proof of God's love."

Either way, your point is sound, and much appreciated - by me anyway.

 

Water main was fixed! It was on the county side of the valve, so no $$ from me! That would have been a $1500-$2000 repair! Phew! Thanks for setting me straight on the beer quote. I even thought I am well read and versed in history I am sure I must have saw the t-shirt version during a pointless excursion down a click-bait rabbit hole.

I ended up just formatting the data drive. I had most of the data and I was so frustrated I just decided to cut my losses. At this point I have everything in good order and humming along nicely: monitor, graphic cards OS, etc. Except for all of my stuff needs reinstalled and updated. My new monitor is fantastic, and the 6gig 1060 is a hot rod. I forgot how slick and fast a fresh OS install is, who refreshing. That won't last long though. And the new-to-me UEFI boots like lightening.

Thanks for taking the time to help and offer advice.

 

Well, Windows 10 is much better at staying quick after an install. Of course, much depends on what you have loaded at boot so always, as in EVERY SINGLE TIME, use the custom install option when installing any program so you can opt out of any resource hogging add-ons.

Also, while this could have just been a quirk, your drive problems could have been a sign of things to come. So keep an eye on it, and keep current backups.