Windows update has killed my HDD, can I recover it?

Aaron Paul Turner 0 Reputation points
2025-08-28T19:58:14.6833333+00:00

Last week I had a clear-out of games on my aging PC as I only use it for work, unless my 4-year-old wants to play Hot Wheels.

The next time I booted my computer, my 2TB wd2002faex-007ba0 HDD wasn't showing and all the links failed.

It shows in Disk Management but I cannot get it to initialised.

Using CHKDSK doesn’t recognise the drive and it is not showing up in my BIOS.

I was aware of an update causing problems with SSDs but I have the ‘fix’ and it is a HDD, so I did not think I would be effected.

Is it possible to get back my data? Should Microsoft offer compensation?

Software like EaseUS cannot see the device. I’m stuck.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. I have other drives and I want to make sure these are backed-up but I am worried than any movement/copying of a large amount of files will do the same thing.

Thank you in advance.Disk1

Device Manger

Windows for home | Windows 10 | Devices and drivers
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  1. Francisco Montilla 11,255 Reputation points Independent Advisor
    2025-08-28T20:42:31.3833333+00:00

    Hello, Aaron. I'm sorry to hear that,

    You're almost certainly dealing with a failing mechanical disk, and the timing with Windows Update is a coincidence. If a drive doesn't appear in firmware/BIOS and won't initialize in Disk Management, no piece of Windows software (including CHKDSK or EaseUS) can bring it back. Those tools only work once the hardware is communicating reliably. The very first priority is to stop trying to initialize or run CHKDSK on it, because that adds wear and can make a marginal disk worse.

    Start by proving whether the problem is the disk or the connection. Power the PC off completely and unplug it. Reseat the SATA data cable and, separately, move the drive to a different SATA power plug from the PSU. If you have a spare known-good SATA cable, use it, and plug the drive into a different motherboard port than before. Now boot straight into the BIOS/UEFI and look at the storage list. If the model "WDC WD2002FAEX-..." and a capacity are shown, the hardware link is alive. If it's still absent after moving both the data cable, power lead, and port, the drive's electronics or mechanics have failed and recovery becomes a job for a professional data-recovery lab. Software cannot help if the firmware cannot see the device.

    If the BIOS does see it, resist the prompt to initialize in Windows, that would overwrite what's left of the partition table. In that case your data is often still recoverable, but the safe path is to take a read-only image of the failing disk to another disk first and work on the copy. I can walk you through that with an open-source workflow (Linux live USB + GNU ddrescue) once you confirm the BIOS detects the drive.

    On compensation: Microsoft doesn't compensate for independent hardware failures. Updates don't write to secondary disks' firmware or mechanics, and a single aging HDD can fail suddenly after years of power-on hours. If you still want to raise it with Microsoft, you can open a support case or use Feedback Hub, but I want to set expectations that this kind of hardware loss isn't something Microsoft reimburses.

    Your other drives are not at risk from copying files. Moving data doesn't "kill" healthy drives. Do make sure you have backups before making big changes, but the issue you're seeing points to this one HDD failing on its own.

    Please, tell me exactly what the BIOS shows after you try the cable and port swaps, and I'll give you the next step. :)


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