Loss of format

I have a WD 1.5 Tb disk for storage only in my desktop PC. It was partitioned into drives E and F of roughly equal size. All of the storage was done on drive F with drive E largely unused.

Recently Acronis drive monitor started warning about the health of drive F which went down from 100% to 40%. After about 2 months drive F lost its contents and Windows declared it to be not formatted. Drive E, on the same disk, still had the few files stored there intact and behaved normally.

I restored the lost contents of drive F from an external back-up HD onto drive E and all seems well so far.

I have 2 questions: Since E and F were on the same disk, why did the health warning and loss of format affect only F? I was expecting a total disk failure.

When I try to access the failed F partition I am invited to format it but get the usual warning that formatting will wipe all data from the DISK. Is this true? I don't want to lose the contents of partition E on the same disk. Is it safe to format drive F?

Best regards,

JR

It should be safe to format drive F:. I am not sure what is going on here but if I were you before you format the drive I would download from the manufacturer of your hard drives web site their diagnostic software. If the manufacturers software says the drive is OK then I would suspect that you have some malware on your computer, if the diagnostic software says that the drive has problems then immediately back up your data and get a new drive.