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[Ton]

Before installing Windows etc. on my new ssd, I removed the old hdd with Windows from my pc case. Then, when I was absolutely sure that everything worked fine, I put it in a docking station and deleted the Windows partition and resized the other partition on it (with movie files etc) with Partition Wizard, so that there was only one big partition on this drive. Fortunately everything went fine.
After that I put this drive back in the pc case. Of course I unplugged the pc and disconnected all cables before doing that. I had to remove the hdd bay and dis- and reconnect the power and sata cables from all the other drives to be able to do it neatly.
When I booted again, to my surprise one of the drives was completely empty and was not recognized by Windows. I had to initialize it again before Windows saw it.
Fortunately there was not very much lost, but I  have absolutely no idea why this happened.
I am sure that I did not "touch" that drive while partitioning. The drive stayed in the case all the time. The only thing I had done was disconnecting and reconnecting the power and sata cable while mounting the old drive again.
In the past I have removed and mounted drives many times and never had problems.
Does anyone know what could have happened ? The only reason I can think of is that something touched the bottom side of the drive (the print side) while manipulating the drive bay causing some short-circuit or something alike. But I wonder if this is possible while there is no power.

[InflatableMouse]

Although a hardware failure is possible, its not likely. Also, a drive won't just "erase", I highly doubt some form of radiation, emp or whatever would have caused it. Static would cause a chip to fail before anything else, I don't tihnk it would just "erase" magneticly stored data. I guess it could, if it would hit the right spot but I can't even begin to think about how unlikely that is (even impossible I would reckon, the platters being surrounded by the casing). Anyways ...

No one will be able to tell you what happened, all we can do is take guesses. My guess is that either Windows didn't recognize the partition on it, due to drivers or BIOS config or something, connected it to a different port on your mainboard (different controller?) and/or you messed up somehow (sorry, happens to the best of us).

If you didn't recreate a new partition and have written new data to it, you could attempt to recover it. Often a driver/bios or controller issue is simply a matter of partition allignment. There are programs out there that can figure this out and recreate the original partition and reallign it so that windows detects it again.

[Ton]

Thanks for your reply.
I already recreated a new partition and wrote new data on it.
I am also absolutely sure that I reconnected the drive to exactly the same sata port on which it was before.
So it stays a miracle how it could happen.
Fortunately there wasn't much important data on it.