Harddrive issue with booting

[Caspload]

Hi, in my build i have the SSD for boot drive (:C) and the 4TB drive split into two partitions: Media 1TB (:I) and Games 2.7TB ish (:E). The 4TB fails to initialise regularly. Sometimes it even stops the pc from booting and I can unplug it and the PC will start perfectly. I have no idea what it could be, and now it's started not booting at all or booting and never being able to initialise.

Sometimes Games (:E) will show up but media won't.

Sometimes Windows itself will freeze when refreshing the My Computer page in Windows Explorer.

Sometimes the PC won't boot at all.

Sometimes in the post screen windows will do an auto disk repair.

Sometimes the PC will boot absolutely fine I just won't have access to either of the partitions. so no home folder, no music or games.

 

I've tried:

Hot plugging it while it's on (I did enable it in the BIOS)

I've ensured the power supply can come with my System, about 60% load when gaming

Switching SATA power and data cables from different ones on the power supply and motherboard respectively

Windows auto disk repair

Made sure it's on AHCI mode in the BIOS

Unplugging everything else in the computer except for what's needed and the hardrive to see if something was causing it to play up

When I could get it to show up in My Computer in Windows, reassigning drive letters to ensure there aren't any conflicts - but doing this made them disappear again. And haven't been able to do anything since.

 

 

The issue is on Media (:I) I have my home user folder with my desktop, documents and iTunes library on. This was to save space on the SSD. And games partition has all my games from steam, origin, humble bundle etc. Approximately 2TB worth. So ideally I would like to not have to reformat the drive or anything which erases it. I can hear the drive spinning and stop spinning when it's off. 

 

It's been working 100% fine, until yesterday (24th May 2016) - typically when I bought Overwatch. 

I can afford to loose the games, because while a lot of effort and time to download them all, It's possible. I would prefer not to loose the home folder. Google Drive has most of my documents for Uni etc - so that's not an issue. I have Apple music so I can easily use the cloud to get that back. It's just all the stuff in 'APPDATA' other registry tweaks that I've done on the computer. Which I did have backed up onto a folder on Media (:I).

 

Any recommendations for what to do?

 

If anymore information is needed, feel free to ask. I'm fairly decent with computers, so I can do anything you need like a log or something?

 

Thanks in advance.

 

 

PCPartPicker part list: http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/p/yHjnTH
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CPU: Intel Core i5-4670K 3.4GHz Quad-Core Processor  (£204.94 @ CCL Computers) 
CPU Cooler: Noctua NH-L9i 57.5 CFM CPU Cooler  (£31.98 @ Ebuyer) 
Motherboard: MSI B85I Mini ITX LGA1150 Motherboard  (£73.99 @ Amazon UK) 
Memory: Kingston HyperX Fury Black 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3-1866 Memory  (£53.34 @ More Computers) 
Storage: Samsung 840 Series 120GB 2.5" Solid State Drive  (£80.00) 
Storage: Samsung 850 EVO-Series 120GB 2.5" Solid State Drive  (£53.80 @ Amazon UK) 
Storage: Seagate Barracuda 4TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive  (£74.98 @ CCL Computers) 
Video Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 980 4GB Superclocked Video Card  (£488.85 @ Amazon UK) 
Case: Silverstone RVZ01B Mini ITX Desktop Case  (£71.99 @ Overclockers.co.uk) 
Power Supply: Silverstone 500W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular SFX Power Supply  (£71.90 @ CCL Computers) 
Total: £1205.77
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-05-26 08:39 BST+0100

[Murasaki]

4TB or 3TB?

I'd suggest diagnosing the drive's health with CrystalDiskInfo first.

[Caspload]

5 minutes ago, ModuleLFS said:

4TB or 3TB?

I'd suggest diagnosing the drive's health with CrystalDiskInfo first.

4TB aha, edited and should be fixed now!

 

And I was thinking something like that, the issue is getting the partitions or the drive to show up in windows again. I keep rebooting and replugging, but nothing in windows will recognise the drive at all.

[Murasaki]

@Caspload You can also try with a different SATA cable, if the drive is healthy.

[StainlessSR]

If the drive will not initialize it is a bad drive. you can keep trying to reinitialize it but as you stated that is a hit or miss thing. It sounds like it is an error with the board part of the hardware not the platters/motor so (warning warranty voiding ahead) if you had a second drive that was identical you could try swapping the io boards to see if the drive would initialize.

[Caspload]

@ModuleLFS I've tried that, I've swapped SATA power and data with my boot drive. The boot drive was fine, but still 4TB refused to boot. I will check the health if I get the drive to show up again.

 

@StainlessSR Unfortunately I don't have another drive to do that with. But yes, exactly. It's a hit or miss. I'm just going to keep trying rebooting etc to get it to be recognised with windows, so I can try what @ModuleLFS has said and also maybe recover the data I need, and just leave everything I could redownload  

[StainlessSR]

1 minute ago, Caspload said:

@ModuleLFS I've tried that, I've swapped SATA power and data with my boot drive. The boot drive was fine, but still 4TB refused to boot. I will check the health if I get the drive to show up again.

 

@StainlessSR Unfortunately I don't have another drive to do that with. But yes, exactly. It's a hit or miss. I'm just going to keep trying rebooting etc to get it to be recognised with windows, so I can try what @ModuleLFS has said and also maybe recover the data I need, and just leave everything I could redownload  

best bet unfortunately. good luck

[Caspload]

Update: I've managed to get the PC to boot reliably without the drive connected. Setting things up on a 1TB seagate drive I had around - so mainly just redownloading everything from the cloud, and repairing my Home folder. Not too much has been lost because the 1TB drive I had was the drive I used to clone from originaly. So while the drive is out of date by about 6 months, it's better than nothing!

 

As for the 4TB drive, it's dead. I'll eventually try and diagnose it some more on a fresh install of windows when I have the time. But I'm sorted for now. So thanks guys! Much appreaciated