Faulty SATA Drive potentially

D. Sheperd · May 18

Hi all,

Let me start off by giving context:

CPU: i9 9900k

Mobo: MSI z390 MEG

GPU: Zotac 2070

Ram: Oly ram 32g (turned off xmp)

Aio cooler and various drives

C drive is a m.2

Windows 10

Latest drivers etc

No over clocking.

So I have world grid installed on my computer. It allows Berkeley to use my computer remotely to do tasks for their research.

It usually takes over when the computer is left idle.

Sometimes this program causes the computer to crash and default bios settings. When this happens, upon boot up I have had to press alt+ L to restart computer with previous bios settings.

Anyways less than a week ago I came upon my computer in that state. It had crashed and rebooted into the "the reset default values" black screen boot page. I usually pressed alt+L to fix the issue and continue with bootup but no input was being registered; used two different keyboards and neither worked. As if the computer had frozen.

I turned off my computer various ways, such as disconnecting it from the back and pressing the power button for more than 30 seconds. To get rid of any remaining electrical charge. Etc etc. Pressed on the clear cmos button on my Mobo and waited several minutes before turning back on. Ultimately what worked was disconnected all my drives except for the c drive which is a m.2

This caused the computer to boot up normally. I then tried turning the computer back on using various combos with the data drives. In doing so I noticed that one drive kept causing the A2 error. Is there anything I can do about this faulty drive? I don't want to lose the data on it and want to continue using it if possible. I now know why it's not good to be cheap with computer parts. Can I connect the drive while the computer is running? Can I change something in the bios the bypass the A2 error? Should I get rid off the world grid network off my computer?

All replies will be appreciated

Blue4130 · May 18

11 minutes ago, D. Sheperd said:

So I have world grid installed on my computer. It allows Berkeley to use my computer remotely to do tasks for their research.

It usually takes over when the computer is left idle.

Sometimes this program causes the computer to crash and default bios settings. When this happens, upon boot up I have had to press alt+ L to restart computer with previous bios settings.

Any outside program that can crash hard enough to mess with the bios should be a giant red flag.

11 minutes ago, D. Sheperd said:

I now know why it's not good to be cheap with computer parts. Can I connect the drive while the computer is running? Can I change something in the bios the bypass the A2 error? Should I get rid off the world grid network off my computer?

Nothing about your problem points to "cheap" hardware. I'd try to use a usb to sata adapter and hot plug the drive like that. But there is a good possibility that when the computer crashed, it corrupted the drive. Getting the data back could be problematic. If you value it, send it to a recovery service.

D. Sheperd · May 20

okay so by taking out the faulty SSD drive my computer stopped having the A2 error and I think the last time it crashed it corrupted the SSD in question. I have important data on that SSD... any advice/help how to get that data back? I probably won't be using this SSD anymore... On disk management it says the SSD is not allocated and when I try to initialize it says "drive is not ready. "