[SOLVED] Drive disappeared and now says "a device which does not exist was specifiied"

[david2022]

One of my hard drives, a 4 TB Seagate disappeared overnight. My computer had rebooted (possibly due to a Windows 10 update) and the drive simply wasn't there. When I went to Disk Management, I see (at the bottom) Disk 1 "Unknown" "Not Initialized"

When I try to initialize it, I get the message "a device which does not exist was specified" and nothing else. I've tried disabling and enabling the device. When I look at it in device manager, I see "Unknown device" under my 'Disk drives' category. I checked the drivers and it says the drivers are the most up to date possible.

The drive, to my knowledge, didn't exhibit any aberrant behavior (sounds, read/write rates/delays/hangups)

Sending to a data recovery center is not an option. (too much personal private data on the drive)

I haven't yet removed the drive and tested in another computer or with another SATA cable or in another SATA port on the mobo.

 

[Lutfij]

Welcome to the forums, newcomer!

I had an issue similar to what you've gotten. The drive ghosted out of nowhere and was even missing from BIOS(devices list) but would appear every now and then. Took us a little while to come to the conclusion that the PSU was playing tricks with us.

You might want to see if the drive does appear on a donor system(laptop, using an adaptor or a desktop used internally) and see if it's "alive". Might want to also pass the make and model of your PSU as well as it's age.

Sending to a data recovery center is not an option. (too much personal private data on the drive)
For your sake, I hope the drive's contents are intact.

 

[dwd999]

One of my hard drives, a 4 TB Seagate disappeared overnight. My computer had rebooted (possibly due to a Windows 10 update) and the drive simply wasn't there. When I went to Disk Management, I see (at the bottom) Disk 1 "Unknown" "Not Initialized"

When I try to initialize it, I get the message "a device which does not exist was specified" and nothing else. I've tried disabling and enabling the device. When I look at it in device manager, I see "Unknown device" under my 'Disk drives' category. I checked the drivers and it says the drivers are the most up to date possible.

The drive, to my knowledge, didn't exhibit any aberrant behavior (sounds, read/write rates/delays/hangups)

Sending to a data recovery center is not an option. (too much personal private data on the drive)

I haven't yet removed the drive and tested in another computer or with another SATA cable or in another SATA port on the mobo.

It helps to first figure out if its a hardware vs. software problem. If possible you could boot with a usb containing a linux live distro and see if that will recognize the disk. If successful at least you would know it that the drive itself is OK and it may just be a Windows 10 problem, and you would be able to rescue your files and move them somewhere else. Or at that point you could consider what would be involved in a complete reinstall of your Windows 10 installation. During a reinstall the Seagate would be disconnected and then after reinstall is complete you could reconnect it and see what happens.

 

[david2022]

Thanks for the information and tips

I haven't been able to mess with it until today. Today when I tried to boot my computer (I rarely turn it off but last night I did to see if leaving it off overnight and changing the temperature profile might have some benefit)

This time during bootup I got the unmistakable rattle of a cable being assaulted by a fan. That was new. So I opened the case up, found no such cable, but stopped a case fan with my finger, halting the noise, and then released and it was silent.

Upon bootup, the misbehaving drive (as well as another drive I lost a year ago) were back.

So naturally I'll be transferring my critical data to a new RAID array I'm currently putting together.

My takeaway from this is that god may work in mysterious ways but the computer gods must perplex even him...

edit: I'm marking this as best answer because it contains the resolution. I hope that is proper etiquette here. I'll change it if I'm asked to