Replaced Faulty WD 1TB HDD - Now PC won't boot....??? Please help.

[ILCattivo]

Hi Guys, hoping someone here can point me in the right direction as to what's happened here, from what I thought would be a very very simple swap of a HDD...

Basically the story goes like this...

Started to notice horrible performance from applications running on my 2nd WD Caviar Black 1TB SATA III Hard Drive. Came to point where any application or program services that were running from that Drive just wouldn't start or error'd.. My whole system performance and boot-up speed was starting to become tediously slow.

[COSMOS Coolermaster 1000 Case / ASUS P7P55D-E Pro, USB 3.0, SATA 6.0GB's / Intel i7-870 2.93Ghz+Turbo / 8GB 1600Mhz DDR3 RAM / Nvidea 1GB Geforce GTX 460 DDR5 / Win 7 Pro 64bit ]

So I ran the Winodws 7 Disk Error Checker on the 1TB drive (As advised by PC Specialst Tech Support), which ran for about 6 hours and found 36 Bad sectors and corrected what it could. I have a complete full backup of this drive and as the PC is less than 3 months old decided to call Tech Support back and request a replacement drive, cause I wasn't happy having paid for a disk which has bad sectors on it and performs pants!!

So my 1st drive is a 300GB Velocirator SATA Drive which is the boot drive and holds the OS and a few programs.

My 2nd Drive is purely for running games and some other small programs from and obviously storing some data like music and video's etc... No great loss if I lost it, as like I said I have a full backup...

Took the faulty 1TB drive out yesterday leaving the 300GB one untouched.

The new drive arrived yesterday from PCS. Brand spanking new and sealed. Slotted it in and connected it up but now all I get after the Bios screen loads is this message!!

'Reboot & select proper Boot device or insert boot media in selected boot device & press any key'

WHAT!!

Am 99.9% confident that in the Boot order Bios Menu the settings are as follows. Checked it numerous times...

1. 300GB Velociraptor (OS)
2. Optical Drive (CD-RW / BD ROM)
3. Removable Media (USB HDD)

There used to be a 4th which was the NIC but I disabled the PXE Boot on LAN option and thus it now doesn't display as expected.

I noticed last night that both the 300GB Raptor and 1TB Caviar are connected through the same cable via the SATA 1 port on the Mobo.

As a test I completely disconnected the 1TB Caviar pulling out it's power and SATA cable from the back of the drive and still the computer won't boot from the original 300GB Drive. Checked that both the SATA & Power cables were seated properly in the Mobo and both appear so...

Serious head scratching here. Can't believe that a simple 2nd HDD swap-out has caused this much grief!!

Please guys any idea's what has happened here as I never thought a simple HDD swap to an identical make and model would result in me not even being able to boot my machine!!

Any advise would be greatly appreciated!!

Many Thanks

 

[Gorman]

Hi, plug both drives back in and visit the boot priority menu within BIOS again. In the same menus there will be a hard drive section, ensure that the raptor is at the top. Then ensure the hdd is the first boot device.

 

[ILCattivo]

Hi, plug both drives back in and visit the boot priority menu within BIOS again. In the same menus there will be a hard drive section, ensure that the raptor is at the top. Then ensure the hdd is the first boot device.

Thanks Gorman, am pretty sure it is as you have stated above but I will double and triple check this evening when I get home!! Am hoping it is something as simple as a BIOS setting that I've missed and not a SATA port failure on the Mobo...

Does this kind of thing usually happen when simply swapping HDD's...?

 

[PCS]

Does this kind of thing usually happen when simply swapping HDD's...?

No, it's an isolated issue that's not really been flagged before on our forums. If you try what Gorman said all should be well. Don't forget it's not boot device priority, it's the hard drive section within boot device priority that you need to amend.

 

[ILCattivo]

No, it's an isolated issue that's not really been flagged before on our forums. If you try what Gorman said all should be well. Don't forget it's not boot device priority, it's the hard drive section within boot device priority that you need to amend.

And this could be the part that I have missed, although that sub-menu does sound familiar... Will confirm settings & results this evening though via this thread...!

Fingers Crossed! ;-)

Thanks guys..

 

[ILCattivo]

Hi, plug both drives back in and visit the boot priority menu within BIOS again. In the same menus there will be a hard drive section, ensure that the raptor is at the top. Then ensure the hdd is the first boot device.

Ok, BIOS Boot Settings confirmed as follows.

Boot Device Priority

1st Boot Device [HDD : P0-WDC WD3000H] = 300GB Raptor
2nd Boot Device [CDROM : P1-TSSTcorp ] = Optical Drive
3rd Boot Device [Removeable Dev.] = Seagate USB HDD

Hard Disk Drives

1st Drive [HDD : P0-WDC WD3000H]
2nd Drive [IDE : WD1002FAEX] Which I presume is the Western Digital 1TB Black Caviar Question.... Why does it have IDE preceeding it?

Saved & Exit (F10) + Enter for OK

Same problem still exisits...!!?

One thing I have noticed though if it is at all relevant...

Storage Configuration
Configure SATA as [AHCI]

AHCI Settings

SATA Port1 [Hard Disk] = Raptor 300GB SATA
SATA Port2 [Not Detected]
SATA Port3 [Not Detected]
SATA Port4 [Not Detected]
SATA Port5 [ATAPI CD ROM]
SATA Port6 [Not Detected]

I presume it doesn't list the new drive because as previously seen it's listed as IDE...??? Strange!!

Any idea's what else I can try please...? Still bemused why it's not booting from the 300GB Drive when the BIOS knows it's there and is configured as the 1st bootable source?

Many Thanks

 

[PCS]

Very strange!

The word IDE - may refer to running in IDEmode as opposed to AHCI, not 100% sure on this.

Try changing the "Configure SATA as..." to IDE and/or RAID if possible, to check, and let us know.

 

[ILCattivo]

Very strange!

The word IDE - may refer to running in IDEmode as opposed to AHCI, not 100% sure on this.

Try changing the "Configure SATA as..." to IDE and/or RAID if possible, to check, and let us know.

Hi PCS

RAID is for Mirroring/Striping across two disks of equal size used for HDD failure contingency. If one disk fails there's still a copy/mirror of the exact same data on the other, allowing the failed drive to be replaced with a like for like without any downtime or long term outage. I am a little reserved as to changing the SATA Configuration to RAID in all honesty!

I am having suspicions here that something untoward has happened to both the disks on my computer at the same time and thus the MBR has possibly become corrupt or is missing from the 300 GB Raptor and hence it now won't boot from it at all.... It may potentially have adopted the same bad sectors that the original 1TB drive had, with those bad sectors affecting where the Master Boot Record sits!!

Very worrying this!!

 

[PCS]

I'm very well aware what RAID is - I've been selling it to our customers for years. However, if the BIOS was configured in a particular mode, for example RAID or AHCI, it is possible that the OS will not boot should this setting be changed, which is why I requested you try changing it.

If the PC will not boot, it looks likely that something has gone wrong somewhere, and therefore I would recommend a fresh installation of Windows. When re-installing the OS, you should have the option not to format your HDD, and therefore any data remaining on the drive will be stored in your windows.old folder within your C: folder.

 

[ILCattivo]

I'm very well aware what RAID is - I've been selling it to our customers for years. However, if the BIOS was configured in a particular mode, for example RAID or AHCI, it is possible that the OS will not boot should this setting be changed, which is why I requested you try changing it.

If the PC will not boot, it looks likely that something has gone wrong somewhere, and therefore I would recommend a fresh installation of Windows. When re-installing the OS, you should have the option not to format your HDD, and therefore any data remaining on the drive will be stored in your windows.old folder within your C: folder.

Have changed BIOS SATA Configuration type to both IDE & RAID Settings as requested but still no joy!

I do notice however that the HDD indicator does blink each time I press a key to confirm the 'Reboot & select proper Boot device or insert boot media in selected boot device & press any key' Error message which at leasts tells us that it's looking at one of the HDD's...

I am not going to do a complete re-install at this time as I am not aware of the condition of the disk and why this error has occurred in the first place? I will boot from my windows disk and attempt a 'repair' first which if it allows me to see the 300 GB Raptor in the setup screen should replace the MBR as part of the repair process...

If it then allows me into windows (Fully booted) I can then run an Error check using windows CHKDSK utility on that volume... If it comes up with more BAD sectors like the previous 1TB disk, then we have a real underlying problem with something corrupting my HDD's as that will be two down in the space of a day or two!!

Will tell you how I get on with the repair and Chkdsk first though...


Watch this space...

Thanks

 

[ILCattivo]

What are the chances that the Windows 7 'System Partition' is on the 1TB Drive I have returned to you guys with the bad sectors on it....???????? Cause it certainly doesn't exist on the C:\Drive.....!

 

[PCS]

I've just checked the QC report:

Disk #1, Partition #0|0.09765625 Gb
Disk #0, Partition #0|279.458984375 Gb

Problem is the drive is returned to the manufacturer straight away and the data will be destroyed. I can check if we've still got it here, will revert back by Monday. Looks like the recovery partition is installed on the 1TB drive, so it may well have been installed on the 1TB and somehow slipped through QC.

 

[ILCattivo]

I've just checked the QC report:

Disk #1, Partition #0|0.09765625 Gb
Disk #0, Partition #0|279.458984375 Gb

Problem is the drive is returned to the manufacturer straight away and the data will be destroyed. I can check if we've still got it here, will revert back by Monday. Looks like the recovery partition is installed on the 1TB drive, so it may well have been installed on the 1TB and somehow slipped through QC.

Hi PCS,

I wouldn't worry about it anymore chap. Bit the bullet and just re-built the PC from scratch making sure the System Partition & OS exist on the same disk this time [Disk #0, 300 GB] This disk is also set as the 2nd Bootable device after the CD/ROM Drive as I like to have the ability to always boot from a CD first just in case of any potential future HDD issues. The above disk is also first in the Bios Hard Drive list too.

Windows 64-bit Pro is now up and running smooth and fast on my Primary 300GB Drive and the OS can also now see my replaced 1TB WD Caviar Data Drive. Just restored everything from my last weeks backup of both Disk Drives and after a few test reboots and application checks we're as good as new...

Yep, shame this was not picked up in the QA test of this particular machine, you deffo don't want any more of your builds going out configured like that or you could end up with an influx of unnecessary tech support calls and potential head scratching like mine!!

Thanks for bearing with me on this one....

Regards

 

[PCS]

Glad you're all sorted, and apologies for the mix up. We will definitely be looking into improving QC around this area to ensure it doesn't happen again!