Windows 7: Getting W7 to recognize a HD

Hi all.

So, I have several physical SATA HDs that I use with Windows 7 Ult. 64-bit. C (OS), D, F, G, H.

All of a sudden, Windows does not see the G drive. It shows up in My Comp., but does not have any properties; the other drives say New Volume (C) x-GB free of x-GB, whereas the G drive now only says G and nothing else. If I double-click it, I get a message saying that the drive needs to be formatted before it can be used.

I removed the HD and put it into an enclosure. All of the data is there, and I am actually copying everything to a BU drive right now.

The question is, what do I need to do to get Windows to recognize the HD? If ultimately I can't, it's no biggie, as I will have all of the data on another HD, so nothing is lost. But I would like to just put it back in, and do whatever I need to do to get Win to see it properly.

Any ideas?

Oh, and sorry i this is not in the right forum, wasn't sure where this should go. feel free to move.

Thank you in advance.

Hi Jason,

Have you tired to run a chkdsk /R on this disk? Give that a go from an elevated command pronpt.

Regards,
Golden

Please connect the drive and upload a screenshot of your expanded disk management layout.

Screenshots and Files - Upload and Post in Seven Forums

Thanks for the replies.

Problem solved. After copying all of the data, I put the HD back in, and before actually booting into the OS, Windows told me that there were errors on drive G, and that it was going to run a check disk. It must have fixed whatever was wrong, because all is fine now.

I guess the thing that puzzles me is that it didn't do that the first two times I rebooted. It only did the check disk after I removed the HD, booted into Wndows without it, shutdown, put the HD back in, and powered back up. Wierd.

Thanks again!

You're very welcome and thanks for the update.

So, even tho I resolvd this, and the drive is ok, I wanted to ask out of curiousity:

In the root of that drive, I have a file called bootsqm.dat What is that, why is it there, and what happens if I delete it? Again, just curious.

Thanks!

bootsqm.dat after chkdsk... are all my files gone? - Microsoft Answers

Cool - thanks!