Question Location is not available - HD bad?

[thhm42]

Hi All,

I've got a HD that just randomly lost certain folders last night. Now, I'd normally just reboot to see i it goes away, but this is the second disk on the same PC that did this...
The error is
https://ibb.co/VvYXzkN

"Location is not available"
"A device which does not exist was specified"

When I try to go into Disk Management it says "Unable to connect to Virtual Disk Service"

I had this same problem last month, figured it was the disk so I rebooted, accessed the data and trashed the disk (smashed it, literally)

Is it the cable, power supply, windows error or truly another faulty disk?

 

[onespeedbiker]

Here is a link that might be a fix. https://www.disk-partition.com/windows-10/disk-management-windows-10-not-working-4125.html Method 1 and 2 are always worth a try, but the second Method 2 is consistant with a number of search result to fix your issue.

 

[thhm42]

Thank you @onespeedbiker.

After a reboot, the hard drive is there. This happened before with another drive and I'm not understanding what is happening.

The drive will be working on 24x7 for a month, then all of the sudden, it'll show up as directories not accessible by my media streamer, then it'll drop out of disk management.

Cable
Power
Port on Mobo
Drive

?

 

[onespeedbiker]

I don't think it's the drive or power. I would certainly try another another cable, especially if the same cable was used on both drives that periodically fail. Depending on your system, there are usually several Sata ports, with possibly one or two (sometimes blue or black) that are a Sata 3 (the other are Sata 2), and the Sata 3 the one you should use for the OS drive (unless you have a M.2 MB and drive).

 

[thhm42]

thanks @onespeedbiker My OS drive is a SSD and the other drives are a 8TB WD and this 6TB WD Red.

Is it possible having 3 drives on the power cable?
Is it possible the mainboard is failing or the controller is?
We did have a minor power blip yesterday, wonder if that can be related but my system is on a UPS so never dropped.

Would really love to understand what's going on.

 

[onespeedbiker]

Three hard drives on a power cable is not excessive, but if you are using any y's or adapters, I would try reconnecting or replacing them to see if it resolves your problem.

 

[thhm42]

Is there any tools to monitor other than SMART stats? I see some errors in the logs.. If I dug them out, would that give you an indicator of the issue?

Appreciate all the help onespeedbiker

 

[onespeedbiker]

What are your PC specs, Make/model or motherboard and other drives? You might also try downloading the Samsung Magician at the site I linked. It's purpose is to configure your system to use a NVMe drive

 

[thhm42]

AMD Ryzen 7 3800x - 8 core/16 thread at 3.6Ghz
Mainboard - Gigabyte X570 Aorus Ultra
32 GB Ripper memory
Windows 10 Pro version 1903
1 x Samsung 860 SSD (OS Drive)
1 x 8TB WD Purple
1 x 6TB WD Red

I don't have a NVMe drive

 

[onespeedbiker]

My bad I was posting on the wrong thread.

 

[thhm42]

Drive has been workin fine for the last 2 days. These are exactly the same symptoms as the previous drive that I thought was dead. It had been in service for 5 years though and had some errors so time to replace. But this one is in better shape

https://imgur.com/a/Y3f6Q0P

View: https://imgur.com/a/Y3f6Q0P

 

[thhm42]

So far the drive has been working. I'm unable to find out what happened. ..

 

[thhm42]

So basically have no clue why the drive stopped working

 

[thhm42]

still seems to be going strong... Any ideas what can cause a drive to sudden get knocked offline? Well. First it looks online, then some directories just cannot be accessed. Then the entire drive goes off

 

[onespeedbiker]

Probably losing your drive..

 

[thhm42]

Thanks 1speed. Is there any way to check. I find it odd that another drive was doing the same thing. Now after a reboot the drive has been up for a week without error

 

[onespeedbiker]

You also might want to check you interior cables..

 

[thhm42]

Just an update: So far so good. No issues at all. Double checked. Another 1000 hours online and stats show the same

However, I'm not sure 100% how to read these stats. Anything glaring about these two drives?

 

[onespeedbiker]

Sometimes Windows 10 can correct it's own software issues. Right now it's working which is the best you can ask for!