Harddisk woes

[133DK]

Having trouble with an old HDD.

I have 4 drives connected to my PC, 2 m.2s and 2 HDDs, all was fine and dandy (for years) until yesterday when I powered it on and windows did it's scan and repair thing on drive F, the oldest of the two HDDs.

When booting up drive F shows up in explorer, but any attempt to interact with the drive causes explorer to either prompt that the drive cannot be accessed, or explorer restarts entirely.

 

So far I have tried disconnecting the other HDD and using the cables from that. Computer does the exact same thing. Seemingly not a cable issue.

 

However, as I had resigned myself to having lost an old drive out of the blue, a new problem arises.

Disconnecting the failing drive. This causes Windows to BSOD on startup.

Disconnecting both the failing drive and the other HDD does the same.

 

So now I am stuck with a failing drive I for some reason can't pull from my system. Any help would be appreciated!

[DoctorNick]

2 minutes ago, 133DK said:

Having trouble with an old HDD.

I have 4 drives connected to my PC, 2 m.2s and 2 HDDs, all was fine and dandy (for years) until yesterday when I powered it on and windows did it's scan and repair thing on drive F, the oldest of the two HDDs.

When booting up drive F shows up in explorer, but any attempt to interact with the drive causes explorer to either prompt that the drive cannot be accessed, or explorer restarts entirely.

 

So far I have tried disconnecting the other HDD and using the cables from that. Computer does the exact same thing. Seemingly not a cable issue.

 

However, as I had resigned myself to having lost an old drive out of the blue, a new problem arises.

Disconnecting the failing drive. This causes Windows to BSOD on startup.

Disconnecting both the failing drive and the other HDD does the same.

 

So now I am stuck with a failing drive I for some reason can't pull from my system. Any help would be appreciated!

This is cost for installing windows with HDD's installed in the system. I would just backup while HDD is installed and then reinstall windows. 

I would also try using some other sata ports. Many boards have an extra sata chip.

[Donut417]

58 minutes ago, 133DK said:

Any help would be appreciated!

When you install Windows from now on, disconnect all other drives. Windows a dumb in a lot of ways, its probably put boot files on the hard drive that is failing. Meaning without that drive connected, those files are gone. Ive seen this happen on a Windows 7 install once upon a time. Which is why I never have other drives hooked up when installing Windows. 

[Kilrah]

Normally when it's the case it wouldn't get to the point where it can generate a BSOD.

 

What's the error on that BSOD?

Can you try the drive on another system? Might be the mobo failing instead.

[133DK]

@DoctorNick & @Donut417, the Windows installation was done with no other drives in the system. Only the current C drive was in.

[133DK]

32 minutes ago, Kilrah said:

 

What's the error on that BSOD?

Can you try the drive on another system? Might be the mobo failing instead.

0xc000021a

I don't think it's the mobo, as the other HDD works with both headers, as long as the failing harddisk is also plugged in

[Kilrah]

52 minutes ago, 133DK said:

0xc000021a

What about the actually readable description at the bottom?

 

53 minutes ago, 133DK said:

I don't think it's the mobo, as the other HDD works with both headers, as long as the failing harddisk is also plugged in

Don't really thing how that could be unless you had done a weird config e.g. with storage spaces or RAID, or had somehow installed critical system things or autolaunching programs on that drive...

[133DK]

4 hours ago, Kilrah said:

What about the actually readable description at the bottom?

There was none, just the sad smiley face, a message that a problem had occurred and restart was required, and that error code along side a QR code that just leads to a generic Microsoft webpage..

 

4 hours ago, Kilrah said:

Don't really thing how that could be unless you had done a weird config e.g. with storage spaces or RAID, or had somehow installed critical system things or autolaunching programs on that drive...

No raid, no auto launching programs from that disk..

 

I have just reinstalled Windows, I saw no other way

 

Thanks for all the help!