I was preparing a new Windows Server 2016 VM to host SQL Server Express 2016. I created a virtual drive for the OS (C:) and installed the operating system. I also created 3 additional drives for DATA (E:), LOGS (F:), and TEMPDB (G:). I created a simple volume on each of the three new drives and performed a quick format and all good and showed sizes of 32GB, 32GB, and 16GB respectfully. I then installed SQL Express 2016 and I specified the default location for system databases and pointed my user databases at E:\, user log files at F:\, and TempDB files (I created 8 data files and 1 log file, all sized to fill 90% of the drive) at G:\. Setup completed without reporting any errors but immediately after install drives E:, F:, and G: all showed as "inaccessible" with sizes of zero bytes. I performed an uninstall of SQL Express, deleted and recreated the volumes, and installed again but this time I created a subdirectory under each so files would be in E:\DATA, F:\LOG, and G:\TEMPDB. This time the issue did not reappear and I see my 9 files in G:\TEMPDB. Does anybody know what may have caused this issue? Do you think it is related to specifying the root of each drive to the installer?
