My D: drive just disappeared...should I open up my laptop to try and reconnect a loose cable?

I've had my brand new Windows 10 gaming laptop for three days now, and I was copying a bunch of files across to my secondary hard drive (the D: drive) from a portable drive, and suddenly the D: drive just disappeared - the drive on which all of my documents are (but thankfully none of my apps). I've tried going to the Disk Management app and performing the "Rescan disks" command, but that didn't turn anything up; in the Device Manager, it wasn't listed under "Disk drives" until after I went to "View" - "Show hidden devices". So now it shows up, but when I right-click on it and open the "Properties" menu, I get this error message:
Currently, this hardware device is not connected to the computer. (Code 45)

To fix this problem, reconnect this hardware device to the computer.
So that would seem to suggest that a cable has come loose - very weird, given that I wasn't moving the laptop at all at the time, but let's assume that there's at least a 95% chance that this is what has happened. Should I be trying to bust into my laptop three days after I bought it and try to identify a loose cable and plug it back in? Or is that a bad idea, given the likely warranty situation I'm under? This was bought from an independent shop called PC Specialist in the UK - this is the unit in question (it's a TongFang chassis, if that means anything to you):
https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/notebooks/optimusXI-17/I can wait until Monday or Tuesday to call the shop and get their feedback, but the timing isn't great given that it's freaking Christmas Eve. And I've certainly never tried to prise open a working laptop before, although heaven knows I've got plenty of old laptops I never use which I could practice on! Any and all advance here would be appreciated.
 

Couperin47

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What is the exact complete Brand and model number of the laptop ? Be aware, almost all modern laptops do not use any cable to connect any drives. Your motherboard apparently has 1 standard SATA drive location for a hard drive or SSD and 2 M.2 drive sockets and those are undoubtedly soldered to the motherboard, Each M.2 stick is held in place by a single screw at the other end. Unfortunately it's very unlikely such drives can get 'disconnected' as, even if the screw fell out, in almost no cases is there enough room for the stick to unplug from it's socket. It's almost guaranteed the drive has failed. Especially if the drive is a 1 or 2 Tb drive, which is heavily packed with memory chips, a lot of superslim laptops really don't provide enough ventilation and when running the drives 'hard' (like when making it write a lot of big files) they can cook themselves....bad design. We need to know which is your Boot drive, the first M.2 would be fastest and I'd expect that to be your C drive. We need to know if your D is the 2nd M.2 or the Sata drive. and if it's mechanical or an SSD.
 
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Chassis & Display Optimus Series: 17.3" Matte Full HD 144Hz 72% NTSC LED Widescreen (1920x1080)
Processor (CPU) AMD Ryzen™ 7 Eight Core Processor 4800H (2.9GHz, 4.2GHz Turbo)
Memory (RAM) 32GB Corsair 2666MHz SODIMM DDR4 (2 x 16GB)
Graphics Card NVIDIA® GeForce® RTX 2060 - 6.0GB GDDR6 Video RAM - DirectX® 12.1
1st Storage Drive NOT REQUIRED
1st M.2 SSD Drive 1TB SAMSUNG 970 EVO PLUS M.2, PCIe NVMe (up to 3500MB/R, 3300MB/W)
2nd M.2 SSD Drive 2TB INTEL® 660p M.2 NVMe PCIe SSD (up to 1800MB/sR | 1800MB/sW)
Memory Card Reader Integrated 3 in 1 Card Reader (Full Size SD / SDHC / SDXC)
AC Adaptor 2 x 180W AC Adaptor
Power Cable 2 x 1 Metre Cloverleaf UK Power Cable
Battery Optimus Series Integrated 46WH Lithium Ion Battery
Thermal Paste ARCTIC MX-4 EXTREME THERMAL CONDUCTIVITY COMPOUND
Sound Card 2 Channel High Definition Audio + MIC/Headphone Jack
Bluetooth & Wireless GIGABIT LAN & WIRELESS INTEL® Wi-Fi 6 AX200 (2.4 Gbps) + BT 5.0
USB/Thunderbolt Options 1 x USB 3.1 PORT (Type C) + 2 x USB 3.1 PORTS + 1 x USB 2.0 PORT
Keyboard Language OPTIMUS SERIES RGB BACKLIT UK KEYBOARD
Operating System Windows 10 Home 64 Bit - inc. Single Licence [KUK-00001]
Operating System Language United Kingdom - English Language
Windows Recovery Media Windows 10 Multi-Language Recovery Image - Unlimited Downloads from Online Account
Office Software Microsoft® 365 Personal (12 Month Subscription - Digital Key)
Anti-Virus BullGuard™ Internet Security - Free 90 Day License inc. Gamer Mode
Browser Firefox™
Notebook Mouse INTEGRATED 2 BUTTON TOUCHPAD MOUSE
Webcam INTEGRATED 1MP HD WEBCAM
Warranty 3 Year Silver Warranty (1 Year Collect & Return, 1 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour)
Dead Pixel Guarantee 1 Year Dead Pixel Guarantee Inc. Labour & Carriage Costs
Delivery STANDARD INSURED DELIVERY TO UK MAINLAND (MON-FRI)
Build Time Standard Build - Approximately 10 to 12 working days
Promotional Item
Welcome Book PCSpecialist Welcome Book - United Kingdom & Republic of Ireland



[TH]Detailed Specification[/TH] [TH][/TH]
Dimensions & Weight
Dimensions (w x d x h) 395.7mm x 260.8mm x 30.05mm
Weight 2.5KG
Colour Black
Chipset
Processor Support Intel® Core™ or AMD® Ryzen™ CPUs
Memory
Memory Type Supports DDR4 2666MHz
Number of Modules 2 x Modules
Maximum Supported Memory 64GB
Hard Drive Capacity
Hard Drive Type 1 x 7mm, 2.5" S-ATA HDD support (With Intel processors only)
M.2 Port 2 x M.2 2280 SSD Ports, 1 x WLAN M.2 2230
Display & Graphics
Graphics Choice of graphics cards - refer to configurator.
Screen Size 17.3 inch Widescreen
Native/Maximum Resolution 1920 x 1080
Refresh Rate Please refer to configurator.
NTSC Please refer to configurator.
Audio
Channels 2 channel HD Audio
Connections Microphone-in and headphone-out
Speakers 2 x 2W Stereo Speakers
Integrated Microphone Yes
Communications
Wireless Support Wireless LAN 802.11ax/ac/b/g/n (M.2 Interface)
Bluetooth Support Bluetooth V5.0 module support
Keyboard & Mouse
Keys RGB backlit isolated keyboard
Language Support Multi-Language support
Pointing Device | Touchpad Mouse Touchpad Pointing Device with left/right click
Backlit Keyboard Yes
Memory Card Reader
Memory Card Reader 3-in-1 Card Reader (SD/SDHC/SDXC)
Ports
LAN 1 x RJ-45 jack
USB 1 x USB 3.1 Port (Type C), 2 x USB 3.1 Port, 1 x USB 2.0 Ports
Display 1 x HDMI Port, 2 x Mini Display Port
Microphone-IN 1
Headphone-OUT 1
DC-in 1
Webcam
Webcam 1.0 MP Webcam
Battery & Power Lead
Battery Capacity 3 Cell Lithium-Ion, 46.74WH
Typical Battery Life Up to 4 Hours
Battery Type Integrated
Power Lead & AC Adpater 1 x Power Lead included with AC Adapter
Security
Kensington Lock Yes
 
What is the exact complete Brand and model number of the laptop ? Be aware, almost all modern laptops do not use any cable to connect any drives. Your motherboard apparently has 1 standard SATA drive location for a hard drive or SSD and 2 M.2 drive sockets and those are undoubtedly soldered to the motherboard, Each M.2 stick is held in place by a single screw at the other end. Unfortunately it's very unlikely such drives can get 'disconnected' as, even if the screw fell out, in almost no cases is there enough room for the stick to unplug from it's socket. It's almost guaranteed the drive has failed. Especially if the drive is a 1 or 2 Tb drive, which is heavily packed with memory chips, a lot of superslim laptops really don't provide enough ventilation and when running the drives 'hard' (like when making it write a lot of big files) they can cook themselves....bad design. We need to know which is your Boot drive, the first M.2 would be fastest and I'd expect that to be your C drive. We need to know if your D is the 2nd M.2 or the Sata drive. and if it's mechanical or an SSD.
Above is the full spec - copied across from a table, but I hope it's just about readable? That's pretty miserable news if the drive has failed already...yikes! But thanks for taking a look at this.
 

Couperin47

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More info on Tongfang, which includes your vendor and and motherboard.
https://www.reddit.com/r/AMDLaptops/comments/himoym/all_of_the_vendors_that_are_offering_the_tongfang/
The good news is they only used the 2 M.2 slots (which are fastest and is what they should use), also both storage devices are the highest quality: Samsung and Intel. Which leaves us the bad news...the Intel is a 2 Tb and if it's died it's almost undoubtedly because it cooked itself. Turns out TongFang is a very new Chinese company and they are making the lowest end crap computers for folks like Walmart and others here in the states under the Insignia brand. It's almost certain their design has completely inadequate cooling for the M.2 sticks and 2 Tb sticks will cook themselves inside the lousy design.
 

Couperin47

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OK, well, thanks for your expertise - you've certainly saved me from doing anything rash! I'll find out on Monday from the company what my next steps are, I guess.
If it is a dead M.2 drive they should offer an immediate replacement. Then go home and write a large number or large files to it...enough so it writes for at least 30-40 minutes...if the second Intel m.2 dies you can be certain this design is totally to blame...it's an oven for large M.2 drives. Odds are a 500 Gb and probably even a 1 Tb can exist in there, but not a 2 Tb drive reliably. This is not all that unusual: I have an old Thinkpad E531, one of the first to use an M.2 slot. The M.2 standard includes 2242, 2260 and 2280 standards (physical). The 22 is the width of the stick (22mm) and 42, 60 and 80 are the length. In fact all but 2280 are mostly ignored now, but my laptop only left a tiny totally enclosed space for the 2242 size. As shipped it had a silly 32 Gb stick that was only used for a SSD cache, but since all M.2 sockets are equal, later 2242 sticks appeared in 64, 128, 256 and even 512 Gb versions all large enough to be used as boot drives. I immediately got a 64 Gb replacement and was able to clone my boot drive and run from it which increased performance, but could barely fit Win 8.1 and programs. Later it was replaced by a 128. There are tons of reports that those who moved to 256 and especially the few 512 Gb 2242 sticks all had serious sudden death issues because of heat.
 
How hot does this thing get?
I didn't think it was that hot, although I had set it to copy files while I went out on an errand (and only discovered the problem when I got back home). The laptop does have three different fan settings, and I was testing it on the middle setting instead of it being at full fan power for the first time yesterday when copying the files...so perhaps by keeping it at full fan, that would have stopped this from happening? (Still a design flaw if so, but potentially a preventable issue in the future...)
If it is a dead M.2 drive they should offer an immediate replacement. Then go home and write a large number or large files to it...enough so it writes for at least 30-40 minutes...if the second Intel m.2 dies you can be certain this design is totally to blame...it's an oven for large M.2 drives. Odds are a 500 Gb and probably even a 1 Tb can exist in there, but not a 2 Tb drive reliably. This is not all that unusual: I have an old Thinkpad E531, one of the first to use an M.2 slot. The M.2 standard includes 2242, 2260 and 2280 standards (physical). The 22 is the width of the stick (22mm) and 42, 60 and 80 are the length. In fact all but 2280 are mostly ignored now, but my laptop only left a tiny totally enclosed space for the 2242 size. As shipped it had a silly 32 Gb stick that was only used for a SSD cache, but since all M.2 sockets are equal, later 2242 sticks appeared in 64, 128, 256 and even 512 Gb versions all large enough to be used as boot drives. I immediately got a 64 Gb replacement and was able to clone my boot drive and run from it which increased performance, but could barely fit Win 8.1 and programs. Later it was replaced by a 128. There are tons of reports that those who moved to 256 and especially the few 512 Gb 2242 sticks all had serious sudden death issues because of heat.
FWIW, this company does seem to have a very positive reputation from the reviews I could find online - loads of people who swear they'll always be buying all of their future computers from it going forward - so I don't think they're selling obvious lemons that wouldn't have been tested! So hopefully this was just a one-off dud, or at least something that can be prevented with the right care and attention.
 

BroodsSexton

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Am I the only one who read the thread title as introducing an elegy to your penis, and a musing about cyberporn?
 

Couperin47

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Can't find any docs or manuals that show the layout of these. The fan is almost certainly enclosed in a heatsink assembly that cools the cpu and gpu, memory and drives are generally not subject to active cooling ventilation. Even Intel can produce a bad chip and infant mortality of such electronics is usually over 60% of failures (if it runs for a month, it will run for 10 years). If it happens with a replacement M.2, then the design is suspect.
 
Can't find any docs or manuals that show the layout of these. The fan is almost certainly enclosed in a heatsink assembly that cools the cpu and gpu, memory and drives are generally not subject to active cooling ventilation. Even Intel can produce a bad chip and infant mortality of such electronics is usually over 60% of failures (if it runs for a month, it will run for 10 years). If it happens with a replacement M.2, then the design is suspect.
OK, now this is spooky...I turned my laptop on this morning (or rather, brought it out of Hibernation), and the D: drive is back! All the files are there and everything. What could possibly explain that, except of course for this being a Christmas miracle?
 

Couperin47

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OK, now this is spooky...I turned my laptop on this morning (or rather, brought it out of Hibernation), and the D: drive is back! All the files are there and everything. What could possibly explain that, except of course for this being a Christmas miracle?
Things kept getting curiouser and curiouser...

CPUs have had 'crowbar' technology that shuts them down before they can self-detruct from overheating for decades but I'm unaware of any such protection in modern SSDs. Could there have been some change to Win 10 that produced the issue ? Since you have no real control of the Home version you have no idea what or when gets pushed to you...just one of the many reasons I'll just keep saying NO.

Intel offers a range of diagnostic utilities and does use a distinct NVMe driver for Optane drives like the 660P, all described and can be downloaded here:
https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/memory-storage/solid-state-drives/consumer-ssds/6-series/ssd-660p-series/660p-series-2-tb-m-2-80mm-3d2.html
There may also be firmware updates to the drive, updating the firmware of drives always entails some risk of losing data and you will always be warned to do a backup prior to such update. The troubleshooting of such drives and firmware update are here:
https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/articles/000005872/memory-and-storage.html
In theory hibernation means nothing should change as the state of the system is copied exactly, but I have always eschewed using hibernation...it's always a good idea to reboot Windows can accumulate subtle errors over long term operation, but this does lend some credence to the theory that it's all heat related.
 
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In theory hibernation means nothing should change as the state of the system is copied exactly, but I have always eschewed using hibernation...it's always a good idea to reboot Windows can accumulate subtle errors over long term operation, but this does lend some credence to the theory that it's all heat related.
You know, I think I may have actually turned the PC back on, rather than bringing it out of Hibernation after all. (My default has always been to Hibernate instead of turning my laptop off, but it sounds like you disagree with that strategy...) Not sure if that makes any difference; FWIW, I was using the laptop extensively yesterday, so it's not like it was cooling down for 36 hours before the D: drive came back online. At this point I think I may just wait and call PC Specialist tech support on Monday morning and figure out what they think or what diagnostics they want me to download, rather than try anything else.
just one of the many reasons I'll just keep saying NO.
Just for clarification, can you explain what you were saying "no" to here?
 

AlNipper49

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It's a good point about hibernation. When rebooting laptops for diagnostic purposes I usually make sure that the machine is off, then pull out the battery, wait a minute, then plug it back in and boot it up. Like Coup said, maybe it was just something dumb that caused it and you'll be fine. If it were me I'd assume the worst and report it to where you bought it from. It *could* be the aforementioned weirdness, but it's more than a 50/50 that it is something physical.
 
It's a good point about hibernation. When rebooting laptops for diagnostic purposes I usually make sure that the machine is off, then pull out the battery, wait a minute, then plug it back in and boot it up. Like Coup said, maybe it was just something dumb that caused it and you'll be fine. If it were me I'd assume the worst and report it to where you bought it from. It *could* be the aforementioned weirdness, but it's more than a 50/50 that it is something physical.
Thanks, Nip. I'm definitely reporting this on Monday to the place I bought it from, but hopefully it's just a minor glitch and not something requiring major repairs.
 

Couperin47

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You know, I think I may have actually turned the PC back on, rather than bringing it out of Hibernation after all. (My default has always been to Hibernate instead of turning my laptop off, but it sounds like you disagree with that strategy...) Not sure if that makes any difference; FWIW, I was using the laptop extensively yesterday, so it's not like it was cooling down for 36 hours before the D: drive came back online. At this point I think I may just wait and call PC Specialist tech support on Monday morning and figure out what they think or what diagnostics they want me to download, rather than try anything else.

Just for clarification, can you explain what you were saying "no" to here?
It's impractical for most folks today, but I'm old enough and stubborn enough that I can simply avoid new hardware and refuse to run Win 10 period. All my computers run 8.1 and I'll be dead before I'm forced beyond that: I acquired a desktop based on the last, most powerful at the time i7, that could run Win 8.1. As a practical matter all current Intel or AMD cpus won't run on any version of Windows except 10 so your only other real choice is some version of Linux and that opens a whole host of issues with endless tweaking for hardware, drivers and software.
 

Harry Hooper

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FWIW, this alert came out last month. It specifically mentions drive D: disappearing as a symptom.
 

Couperin47

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FWIW, this alert came out last month. It specifically mentions drive D: disappearing as a symptom.
Nothing in that surprises me. I don't have to care, not only don't I run Win 10, I have Updates turned off in 8.1. These days 2/3 of the updates are not security or other useful patches, instead they add telemetry and other "features" of 10 to track and analyze your usage for Microsoft, not to mention back when they tried everything possible to force an 'upgrade' to 10 upon us. These days they have made it virtually impossible to even just find the actual security updates for manual installation. I am forced to a routine using 3 independent sites to figure out which updates I want and then, never until there have been several months of feedback to make sure they are not defective.
 

Couperin47

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Even back in Win 8 and 8.1 the "Restart" option from the Start button is actually a 'Warm Boot' which is NOT a true real actual "Cold Boot" in that some cleanup and scheduled startup routines in the OS, as well as some other things like your A/V do not happen. That's why above Nip specified he turns laptops off, removes the battery, waits one minute and then restarts... he's guaranteeing a Cold Boot.
 
Just to follow up on this thread: I spoke to a techie at the company that sold me my laptop yesterday, and he remotely accessed my PC to do some diagnostic checks (downloading the Intel SSD Toolbox app to do so), and everything seemed fine. No red flags at all. So he was kind of at a loss about what to say; we left it at that for the moment.

So today, I mapped my D: drive to automatically sync to my new 1 TB OneDrive account (acquired when I bought an Office 365 subscription), and about 21 GB into its file upload, the D: drive disappeared again. So there are two pieces of evidence suggesting that this issue is directly related to me putting the drive through its paces by trying to transfer loads of files at once; I wonder if maybe the drive has a fail-safe mode that causes it to shut down if it's getting too hot to avoid burning up? Either way, I'm glad I can phone the seller again tomorrow instead of having to wait for four days....
 

Couperin47

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Just to follow up on this thread: I spoke to a techie at the company that sold me my laptop yesterday, and he remotely accessed my PC to do some diagnostic checks (downloading the Intel SSD Toolbox app to do so), and everything seemed fine. No red flags at all. So he was kind of at a loss about what to say; we left it at that for the moment.

So today, I mapped my D: drive to automatically sync to my new 1 TB OneDrive account (acquired when I bought an Office 365 subscription), and about 21 GB into its file upload, the D: drive disappeared again. So there are two pieces of evidence suggesting that this issue is directly related to me putting the drive through its paces by trying to transfer loads of files at once; I wonder if maybe the drive has a fail-safe mode that causes it to shut down if it's getting too hot to avoid burning up? Either way, I'm glad I can phone the seller again tomorrow instead of having to wait for four days....
Just to be clear you were trying to transfer from the D drive to your cloud account, which means you were only reading from the D drive, which draws far less current than any write operation. This implies the ventilation is really inadequate for any extended operation if the issue is thermal or the Intel stick has a real problem. I'd insist on a replacement of the drive and, if you're taking it to the dealer then immediately insist on a test of writing some large files to that drive that last at least 20 mins continuous. If that also fails...the odds are quite high the design is suspect. You might also try equivalent good drives: Samsung 970 (unless your laptop actually supports the NVMe 4.0 spec, which I doubt, if it did they probably would have made your Boot SSD support that standard), WD Black 750 or Crucial P5, all of which are at least as fast as the Intel.
 

Couperin47

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Frankly, you should back out of this if you still can. A bespoke suit from a local tailor in the UK can mean high quality, but that's not how the electronics industry works. There is a Tongfang Universal that makes TVs in quantity, but that's not the supplier. These come from Tongfang HK which does, in fact, make some computers for Walmart. Here's the review of their highest end model made for Walmart:
https://www.notebookcheck.net/Walmart-EVOO-Gaming-17-Review-Chinese-Laptop-with-Walmart-s-Name-Slapped-On.444810.0.html

You have no relationship or support from Tongfang: they sell the case & mb to the roughly 25 dealers they have, mostly in Europe (2 in US) who stuff them with memory, drives etc and provide the only 'support" and warranty. But these are all barely above mom & pop dealerships with virtually no real resources or technical ability. Zero evidence any schematics or manuals for these laptops exist in any language, and if the dealer calls Tongfang the only few folks who can even speak basic english are only interested in discussing how many new boxes you want to buy. Walmart can't support what they sell either, but with quantity they just replace the duds, they can afford to. Your dealer cannot and small shops like this are dying everywhere.

This is the equivalent of buying a kit car assembled by a local garage...not a good idea. You really need to buy a laptop from someone real who can and will support it...which means for Windows (in order of 2019 sales): Lenovo, HP, Dell, Acer, Asus.

If anyone following this thread has a different opinion...please weigh in....
 
That review seems...mostly pretty good? FYI, I did plenty of due diligence on PC Specialist before buying - they've been open for 18 years, have won all sorts of awards, have generally outstanding customer reviews (but not exclusively outstanding reviews, which would of course be a red flag) and seem to be the biggest and best independent seller here in the UK. And I have a one-year collect-and-return warranty, so I've got plenty of time to iron out any kinks and get fully comfortable, or not, with the laptop. So at the moment, I think it's probably premature for me to back out, although I can certainly keep that club in my bag if the problem persists.

Speaking of the problem: I booted up the machine again this morning ahead of my next call to PC Specialist, and the D: drive was back. I was kind of hoping it would still be gone so I could share the problem with the techie I was about to speak to, but anyway, he guided me in unscrewing the back of the laptop and unplugging/plugging back in the hard drive itself, just in case a loose connection was the issue. And I managed not to screw that up - the D: drive is still there now, having booted the machine back up - so we'll see if that makes a difference. (My OneDrive backup process has begun again, so I should probably know later today if this is going to happen again.) If nothing else, it feels very empowering to have successfully accessed the innards of a laptop for the first time...and it means that if the drive should fail again and they send me out a new drive to replace it - which they've promised they will if it happens again - I'll be able to install it myself and not need to send the machine away for a week or more to have them do it. (If a second drive were to fail, I think I'd then ask the company to send me the equivalent but more expensive Samsung drive and try that out...and if that were to fail as well, then I'd ask for a refund and look elsewhere.)
 

Couperin47

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That review seems...mostly pretty good? FYI, I did plenty of due diligence on PC Specialist before buying - they've been open for 18 years, have won all sorts of awards, have generally outstanding customer reviews (but not exclusively outstanding reviews, which would of course be a red flag) and seem to be the biggest and best independent seller here in the UK. And I have a one-year collect-and-return warranty, so I've got plenty of time to iron out any kinks and get fully comfortable, or not, with the laptop. So at the moment, I think it's probably premature for me to back out, although I can certainly keep that club in my bag if the problem persists.

Speaking of the problem: I booted up the machine again this morning ahead of my next call to PC Specialist, and the D: drive was back. I was kind of hoping it would still be gone so I could share the problem with the techie I was about to speak to, but anyway, he guided me in unscrewing the back of the laptop and unplugging/plugging back in the hard drive itself, just in case a loose connection was the issue. And I managed not to screw that up - the D: drive is still there now, having booted the machine back up - so we'll see if that makes a difference. (My OneDrive backup process has begun again, so I should probably know later today if this is going to happen again.) If nothing else, it feels very empowering to have successfully accessed the innards of a laptop for the first time...and it means that if the drive should fail again and they send me out a new drive to replace it - which they've promised they will if it happens again - I'll be able to install it myself and not need to send the machine away for a week or more to have them do it. (If a second drive were to fail, I think I'd then ask the company to send me the equivalent but more expensive Samsung drive and try that out...and if that were to fail as well, then I'd ask for a refund and look elsewhere.)
I'm assuming you now have the Intel Toolbox installed which I believe can report the current temperature of the drive, but can't actually monitor it over time. Go to www.hwinfo.com which is the most comprehensive and reliable app to display everything about your computer. At download select the installer version (the program is completely free, no ads). When you run it at least 3 windows will open with a truly comprehensive report of all hardware, etc. One window will be Sensor Status. On the right side it will include S.M.A.R.T. info which is the standard for all modern HD and SSD to report their status, including their temps. The useful thing about this app is, while it's open it will show the current, min and max temps each drive reports so you can easily see what happens while you're running it. Even if it 'disappears' you should still have a record of what was going on when it shut down so we should have a pretty good idea if the issue is thermal.
 
I'm assuming you now have the Intel Toolbox installed which I believe can report the current temperature of the drive, but can't actually monitor it over time. Go to www.hwinfo.com which is the most comprehensive and reliable app to display everything about your computer. At download select the installer version (the program is completely free, no ads). When you run it at least 3 windows will open with a truly comprehensive report of all hardware, etc. One window will be Sensor Status. On the right side it will include S.M.A.R.T. info which is the standard for all modern HD and SSD to report their status, including their temps. The useful thing about this app is, while it's open it will show the current, min and max temps each drive reports so you can easily see what happens while you're running it. Even if it 'disappears' you should still have a record of what was going on when it shut down so we should have a pretty good idea if the issue is thermal.
Thanks again for this - I've downloadd and opened the app. Presumably I need to have it open and running for it to take any readings (i.e., it doesn't just run in the background)? Also, if the drive does fail again and I want to create a report which documents the temperature up until the moment of the failure that I can share with a techie investigating the issue, how would I best do that? I see a "Save Report" option at the top of the app homepage, but I'm not sure if I need to customize it or anything.

By the way, the D: drive disappeared again this afternoon while copying files to OneDrive, then reappeared as soon as I restarted the laptop. Very, very odd.
 

Couperin47

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Thanks again for this - I've downloadd and opened the app. Presumably I need to have it open and running for it to take any readings (i.e., it doesn't just run in the background)? Also, if the drive does fail again and I want to create a report which documents the temperature up until the moment of the failure that I can share with a techie investigating the issue, how would I best do that? I see a "Save Report" option at the top of the app homepage, but I'm not sure if I need to customize it or anything.

By the way, the D: drive disappeared again this afternoon while copying files to OneDrive, then reappeared as soon as I restarted the laptop. Very, very odd.
Yes HWInfo has to be open, but you can minimize it. On the bottom right of the Sensor window is a Gear button which has extensive settings for what is logged and all sorts of ability to format the sensor data. The Main window has a top drop-down "Report", which brings you a Create button. That opens window that lets you choose a text or htm and several other formats for the data, text would obviously be easiest, you also get to choose the file name and location to save it to, the next screen allows you to choose what is included, the bottom last major selection box is the sensors, when you hit Finish your report gets saved. It's not a bad idea to create at least 1 complete report because it includes all sorts of info which you otherwise don't know (like the actual chipset and video components your motherbaord uses, the exact BIOS and tons of other details about your hardware)

Back on the Sensor window, the Clock button starts the timer and resets all the values, the List with Green + button to the right starts the program to log. The 2 screen button actually allows you to connect to another computer running HWInfo for remote monitoring, which is a bit too elaborate for our current needs.
 
FYI, my story appears to be having a happy ending. PC Specialist very quickly shipped out a new drive to me which arrived yesterday, and after I had a brief palpitation when it wasn't recognized by my computer after being installed - because I'd forgotten it needed to be formatted for first use - everything has been silky smooth with it so far. I copied around 1 TB of files across from a portable drive with no hiccups at all, and after leaving it to copy files to my OneDrive overnight, it's still going strong (87 GB so far and counting). So for now, it certainly seems as though the first drive I was given was faulty, rather than there necessarily being any underlying and broader issues with the laptop itself.

Thanks again to @Couperin47 in particular, and a very Happy New Year to all!
 

InsideTheParker

persists in error
SoSH Member
Jul 15, 2005
40,371
Pioneer Valley
These days they have made it virtually impossible to even just find the actual security updates for manual installation. I am forced to a routine using 3 independent sites to figure out which updates I want and then, never until there have been several months of feedback to make sure they are not defective.
I will be setting up my new laptop any day now, and I would be interested in your routine. So long as it was supported, I ran the updates on my WinPro7 selectively, checking on several sites that I probably found out about here on Sosh, before allowing each update. I get the idea that would be even more of a hassle with Win10?
 

Couperin47

Member
SoSH Member
I will be setting up my new laptop any day now, and I would be interested in your routine. So long as it was supported, I ran the updates on my WinPro7 selectively, checking on several sites that I probably found out about here on Sosh, before allowing each update. I get the idea that would be even more of a hassle with Win10?
LOL no hassle at all: If you wound up with 10 Home, you have virtually zero ability to control updates, unless you sabotage the update process completely, which I do not endorse...Things are a bit better with 10 Pro, but it still only amounts to being able to delay when updates are applied. So 'don't worry your pretty little head" (that is not meant to be sexist...the whole philosophy of Win 10 is to treat everyone as a dumb herd animal).
 

Couperin47

Member
SoSH Member
FYI, my story appears to be having a happy ending. PC Specialist very quickly shipped out a new drive to me which arrived yesterday, and after I had a brief palpitation when it wasn't recognized by my computer after being installed - because I'd forgotten it needed to be formatted for first use - everything has been silky smooth with it so far. I copied around 1 TB of files across from a portable drive with no hiccups at all, and after leaving it to copy files to my OneDrive overnight, it's still going strong (87 GB so far and counting). So for now, it certainly seems as though the first drive I was given was faulty, rather than there necessarily being any underlying and broader issues with the laptop itself.

Thanks again to @Couperin47 in particular, and a very Happy New Year to all!
Excellent, so Intel can ship boards with subtle issues that evade automated testing...at least it's not a common thing....
 

tmracht

Member
SoSH Member
Aug 19, 2009
3,070
Excellent, so Intel can ship boards with subtle issues that evade automated testing...at least it's not a common thing....
As someone who started his career as a test guy for a hard drive company, the teams try hard to test components, but there's so much that can happen even beyond normal stuff such as damage at installation, I once saw a batch fail at OQA because the wrong cleaning solvent was loaded into the cleaning bottles at OQA, that one is well beyond the test time, but meant so many were vulnerable to failure due to corrosion, we quarantined, recalled and mitigated, but we didn't find out until we started getting unexpected returns.

We weren't Intel but the Quality Department was enormous and we still were happy when the returns were only 0.03% unexpected. Sadly, that still means if you sell 1m devices you're seeing 300 fail unexpectedly. Sucks but tis the game.
 
Excellent, so Intel can ship boards with subtle issues that evade automated testing...at least it's not a common thing....
Postscript: in the middle of my continued OneDrive upload attempts, my new drive disappeared on two separate occasions yesterday - right after one of my contacts from PC Specialist had followed up with an email to ask if it was OK, and I'd responded to say that it was working perfectly! It reappeared immediately after restarting on both occasions, but I went straight back to him and explained what had happened. He had me go to...

https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/detect.html
https://downloadcenter.intel.com/download/29722?v=t

...and make sure I had the correct drivers and firmware installed, and it appears that the firmware was not up-to-date. I fixed that last night, and (touch wood) it's been fine ever since so far, so maybe that was the problem all along?
 

Couperin47

Member
SoSH Member
Postscript: in the middle of my continued OneDrive upload attempts, my new drive disappeared on two separate occasions yesterday - right after one of my contacts from PC Specialist had followed up with an email to ask if it was OK, and I'd responded to say that it was working perfectly! It reappeared immediately after restarting on both occasions, but I went straight back to him and explained what had happened. He had me go to...

https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/detect.html
https://downloadcenter.intel.com/download/29722?v=t

...and make sure I had the correct drivers and firmware installed, and it appears that the firmware was not up-to-date. I fixed that last night, and (touch wood) it's been fine ever since so far, so maybe that was the problem all along?
I also gave you the urls to check and upgrade drivers and firmware way up above in post #14. It appears Intel drivers are chasing the constantly moving object that is Win 10 and was necessary...yet another reason I won't go near Win 10 unless forced to at gunpoint.....