Hard drive acting funny at boot

[chocobosandwich]

I recently built a new machine with a new SSD and toshiba hdd. Both the SSD and toshiba hdd work fine. I also transplanted my old 2TB samsung hdd full of stuff. With it connected in the system, the gigabyte logo at boot would restart several times, then the windows logo would hang for over a minute before finally showing the desktop. The samsung is not visible and not in disk management. However, every other time I turn the PC on, it will randomly show up.

It is labeled as a dynamic foreign disk in disk management. I imported the drive and dragged the files onto the toshiba drive. While dragging, windows would constantly nag me about there being errors on the drive and I should backup, which is basically what I am already doing. After dragging the data, I delete the volume and format as simple ntfs. The drive doesn't cause the gigabyte mobo logo to hang anymore, but it still freezes the windows logo for a good 30sec to a minute longer than it needs, and you can hear it starting up and making a revving up sound during the windows logo, but it does it only once, and no repeated clicking like some failed drives I use to hear.

Now the drive more or less consistently shows up in windows, but occasionally disappears. I used the built in chkdsk by right clicking the drive and scanning it for bad sectors. It's suppose to be a surface scan from what I've read. After many hours, the results say there is no problem.

I've been able to read and write from the drive without any issue, getting over 100MB/sec, and it makes absolutely no noise aside from that weird revving up noise during the windows logo that prolongues the logo for way too long. I get the impression the hdd is suppose to start up when you push the power button with all the other components, but instead it decides to do it very slowly on the windows logo. The drive worked without issue in my old computer and never stalled windows. I thought I might have damage the drive somehow when moving it between computers.

I still don't know if the drive is actuallly at fault, or maybe my gigabyte H97N mobo doesn't like it. I swapped around sata ports and still the same. The revv up thing that it does at the windows logo and the extra long windows logo wait is what bugs me. I just want to eliminate it.

 

[C1]

Get a clean (ie, fully successful) "WIPE" of the Samsung then verify it with SeaTools (Long Scan).

After formatting, verify that the drive is aligned.

Also when booting, verify that the drive in fact registers during POST (ie, shows in the POST screen).

Losing the drive in disk manager could be the result of the drive's firmware if the drive uses "green technology". To test this, use Soft Jock's "My Disk is Spinning".

Much of the delay being experienced at the Win logo is most likely due to the Samsung undergoing registration. Format it as only a 200GB single NTFS partition and see what happens.

 

[Elixer]

Look in your event viewer, you will most likely see lots of errors / warnings about the drive in question.


You might also want to check SMART (with crystaldiskinfo) and see if it shows anything.

Usually, if the drive pops in/out, that is a sign of it failing.

 

[chocobosandwich]

I'll have to do a full erase/zerofill later. It says fail in seatools for windows. I think I have to make a bootable DOS version to do that without win7 running.

Seagate says smart fail as well, but gives me no other info.

Crystaldiskinfo says BAD. There's a red circle next to spin up time and the values are current:19 worst:11 threshold:25. I don't know how to read these.

Edit: I just shut down my computer and turned it back on. Went to see if anything changed. Crystaldiskinfo says GOOD. The Spin up time value is now 72 11 25. It went from 19 to 72. Seatools says SMARTASS. I'm sure if I shut it down and turn it back on again, it will change again. Seatools is allowing me to do a full erase now in windows, so I am doing it right now, but not sure if anything is happening since there's no spinning hourglass or anything...

Edit: I was doing a full erase been accidentally turned off my pc for it was fully done. I then did a long generic scan using seatools and it passed it. I don't remember there being any useful settings in the BIOS when I last checked either. I'll just use the drive to store non-important stuff for now.