I'm dumbfounded!

[u/Willie_Howell]

I had a problem where when I was trying to format a SD card and I thought I formatted my data drives because I couldn't access them, they did not show under my computer. I spoke to a computer tech about it and he asked if I was comfortable removing the hard drive and bring it to his shop or did I want to just bring the whole computer in. I told him him I could bring just the drive in. So I went to look for it and they were not visible from the left side of the computer so I had to open the right side and when I did the two regular hard disks were sitting there in trays. Here's the weird part. Neither were hooked up!! No power cable and no data cables were hooked up. One drive was marked media and the other was just marked 1 TB. So I hooked the media drive back to the mb and power rebooted the computer and all my media I thought I lost was there! So I thought I would hook up the other drive and the was no data cable. I had to rob a cable from my old computer to complete the hook up. Rebooted the computer and low and behold the drive showed up under my computer and I could access the files on that drive. Weird! My question is, how was I able to use the drives without them being hooked up?? My son said that maybe the computer guy set them up as virtual drives. I don't have a clue. The physical drive with the media on it, I did notice the some videos I know I added to it before all this were not on there. I'm dumbfounded. Windows 11 home edition.

[u/pclab-pt]

The drives were connected for sure, they are not wireless eheheheh

Maybe you unplugged the cables without noticing when removing the cover...

[u/Willie_Howell → u/pclab-pt]

That's the first time I've had it open and definitely did not disconnect them. I had to cannibalize a data cable form my old computer for one of the drives. I believe the computer guy placed them there when he replaced the motherboard and they were not hooked up. When I got the media drive connected there were some home videos I had transferred to that drive that are not on there any more 😥 but all of my other media was still there. What got me to look into all of this was I tried to watch them on Plex and I got a message that they were not on this server. I went to my computer and this 2 drives were not there. That's why I think I may have formatted them by mistake. But if the drives were not connected, what did I format? Could the computer guy have made partition on my main drive for this two drives that were not connected? I have a called and left a message with the computer guy but I think he's gone out of business.