MORE hard drive (?) problems!

Syribo

Syribo

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Mar 9, 2008
Messages
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I don't know WTF is going on with my external drive... But here is a history (And a TL;DR)
http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1350410
First thread I posted when I started having problems a few months ago. TL:DR, HDD died it seems.. so I sent it back to Seagate to get a replacement.


I finally got my new HDD from Seagate a few weeks ago, and all was going fine until recently. I used to leave my computer on all day and night, but it's just so loud that I have begun turning it off when I sleep at night (It's about 1-2 feet from my head when I sleep).

So I turn on my computer a few days ago, and it just stops loading after the initial Windows loading screen. Just a black screen. I tried a few times, and still the same problem. So I turned off the external drive and took the power cord out of my system for a few minutes. I turned it back on (Without even turning on the external drive, I had forgotten to) and the computer worked.

The next day I turn the computer on, along with the external drive, and I have the same problem AGAIN, as well as today.

I can't even use the drive because once I get into Windows the drive is not recognized if I turn it on after the system boots up originally.

Does anyone have any idea WTF could be wrong here? All specs are in my signature... Any help would be appreciated. :(


 
Well, the fact that it starts to load Windows and freezes makes me think that it's not necessarily a hardware issue as such. If you go into the BIOS, does the external show up properly there?

Let's say it does. So, when it goes to load Windows, the OS is looking at all your attached components and when it hits that drive, it goes WTF and hangs. Driver? Let's see.

Reboot the system with the hard drive attached, and this time, see if you can go into safe mode. If you can, then we can safely say that it's not a power issue, but instead may be a driver or process issue that occurs between the drive and Windows when loading the OS.

If you can't, then I would take a look at your event log after rebooting with the drive detached--take the EL with a grain of salt, we're looking for train wrecks here, not the minutae. If the EL happens to be clean of big red circles...well, I would start looking at your power supply, assuming you have had no other problems with the computer sans external hard drive. 750w on system with that much stuff might be forcing the system to make some tough choices for power allocation...and you didn't even mention other peripherals like printers, Ipods, etc.

I've seen a similar issue with odd and sundry USB devices before (as a side note) and got around them by disabling Legacy USB support in the BIOS. Basically, all that does is kill USB device detection once you get past the POST until after you get into Windows. It will not affect your ability to use your USB keyboard to get into the BIOS, etc.
 
Also...
Do you have a UPS?
Do you have central or spot air conditioning?
 
I had similar happen with a cheap external drive caddy.
Some drives I used on it were very difficult to get going and if they were plugged in while trying to boot, the boot process would hang.

So for me it was a combination of a crap external drive caddy and certain drives just not liking it.
 
Thanks for the responses :) I'm going to try out everything you said and get back with the results... Should I also add that I can not use my USB keyboard until Windows actually loads? This has been a problem for a while.. I have to unplug my G15 and use an older keyboard without a USB connection instead.

I don't have a UPS... and I have no air conditioning at the moment, if that's what you meant enginurd?

And other peripherals I use is mainly just my printer... no iPod or anything else.
 
Yah, I asked about A/C because when those kick on, it causes a dip in power, which HDDs don't take kindly to; a UPS would protect your system from these types of things. So while you may not need a UPS, its still a good idea to get one. You didn't spend all of your money already, did you? :p Try everything Heather mentioned first. Decide on a UPS later. ;)
 
Hm...the bit about the keyboard is interesting. I am assuming you've used multiple ports and had the same results. The motherboard assigns IRQs to individual components, such as USB, PCI, etc, and the amount that you can assign/share is limited to right around 16, with a few more machine level only and uneditable. When you get into Windows, it assigns "virtual IRQs" that allow for a little more flexibility.

If your USB is unresponsive prior to launching Windows, it could be that the IRQs are not shaking out properly...while "keyboard" is reserved for IRQ 1, USB interrupts can be moved to whatever is available at the time...and if nothing is available, it may not necessarily trigger a visible error, it will just wait until it gets into Windows to work.

Question: If you use the PS2 keyboard with the external drive connected but with no other USB devices (if your printer is one) attached to the system, does the system boot properly?

I'm still leaning towards power being the culprit, but I am curious to see if the keyboard and drive problems have the same root cause.
 
As for the keyboard, make sure Legacy USB / USB keyboard / DOS keyboard / (whatever the hell your BIOS calls it) is enabled in the BIOS.


(reading the rest of the story now :p)
 
With legacy USB support disabled, he should still be able to access keyboard function prior to the end of POST. After POST ends, there's a period between the end of POST and Windows loading where USB devices will not be accessible. So his specific problem has nothing to do with that setting...it's something else.
 
Heather Taylor said:
With legacy USB support disabled, he should still be able to access keyboard function prior to the end of POST. After POST ends, there's a period between the end of POST and Windows loading where USB devices will not be accessible. So his specific problem has nothing to do with that setting...it's something else.
Click to expand...

Depends on the BIOS. I've had some computers that I had to use a PS2 keyboard to enable that setting so that I could use my USB keyboard to get access to BIOS.

As far as IRQ's go, there's not "right around" 16, there are exactly 16. But that shouldn't matter since PCI more or less eliminated IRQ conflicts by allowing a single IRQ to be shared among multiple devices.
 
Is this an external enclosure that you added a Seagate drive to, or is it a Seagate FreeAgent external HDD? Do any other USB peripherals work if you plug them in after windows is loaded? If so, I don't think its a USB problem (regarding the external HDD, not the KB -- the KB is definitely a USB problem, lol).
 
enginurd said:
Is this an external enclosure that you added a Seagate drive to, or is it a Seagate FreeAgent external HDD? Do any other USB peripherals work if you plug them in after windows is loaded? If so, I don't think its a USB problem (regarding the external HDD, not the KB -- the KB is definitely a USB problem, lol).
Click to expand...

It's a Segate drive inside an Antec MX-1 enclosure, connected by eSATA.

My keyboard, mouse and printer will all work if they're unplugged while booting up the system, and then plugged in at the Windows loading screen or even later.

Still trying to go through all the troubleshooting techniques advised in this thread.. just having a bad few days of chronic pain (Damn winter!) and have barely been able to even move out of bed! So today I'll hopefully have some more news, heh.

Also, did I forget to mention that it's eSATA and not USB?
 
Syribo said:
It's a Segate drive inside an Antec MX-1 enclosure, connected by eSATA.

My keyboard, mouse and printer will all work if they're unplugged while booting up the system, and then plugged in at the Windows loading screen or even later.

Still trying to go through all the troubleshooting techniques advised in this thread.. just having a bad few days of chronic pain (Damn winter!) and have barely been able to even move out of bed! So today I'll hopefully have some more news, heh.

Also, did I forget to mention that it's eSATA and not USB?
Click to expand...

That definitely makes things a LOT different :D
 
In that case, is AHCI enabled?
Are you using the NVIDIA SATA/IDE drivers or the generic Intel ones? You could try re-installing these, but I still think its a power problem with your enclosure. I'd RMA the MX1 if the drive works fine plugged into an internal SATA port. BTW, did you ever recover your data prior to RMA'ing that seagate?
 
enginurd said:
In that case, is AHCI enabled?
Are you using the NVIDIA SATA/IDE drivers or the generic Intel ones? You could try re-installing these, but I still think its a power problem with your enclosure. I'd RMA the MX1 if the drive works fine plugged into an internal SATA port. BTW, did you ever recover your data prior to RMA'ing that seagate?
Click to expand...

Nope, I lost all the data... I'm so lazy and didn't feel like going though a ton of stuff to get it all back :( Lost a lot of stuff though! Luckily I don't have too many things on the drive right now.. but I moved some more photo albums onto it (Ironic that my 'backup' drive is the one that keeps having problems :p).

I'm not even sure which drivers I'm using... I'll have to check that... uhm... how do I check that? :x If I go into Device Manager and go to one of the SATA ports, then Driver, it says:
Driver Provider: Nvidia

But I don't know if it's saying Nvidia because I actually have the Nvidia drivers, or because it's based on the Nvidia board?

Also, I feel so dumb for not mentioning I had it connected through eSATA in the first place heh oops!

So, should I take the side off my computer and plug the External enclosure right into a SATA port, and see what happens?

EDIT: Also.. how do I know if AHCI is enabled? Remember, I'm a total noob ;) I put this thing together somehow, but I still don't know that much about many things hehe.
 
AHCI is a setting in your BIOS for your SATA controller.

Yah, try it. If the drive is dead again, I'd RMA it and the Antec enclosure, then get a good UPS.

I believe you're using the NVIDIA drivers, so you can try re-installing those, or updating them, if there are any updates.
 
Well..... I took the hard drive out of the MX-1 and put it inside my system and connected it to a SATA port... and it works. Vista booted up perfectly, and I can use the drive and access it fine...

I guess the MX-1 enclosure is the culprit then? I wonder if it somehow killed the original drive that I RMAd two months ago... I know for a fact that the drive I sent back to Seagate didn't work because I tried putting it inside the system and connecting it with a SATA port, still didn't work.

But this one does... God, I don't even remember what store I bought MX-1 from.. It wasn't Neweg.. and I hope it's still under warranty or something.. I think it might have been the Circuit City website..
 
Should still be under warranty. Look for your receipt... Antec will ask for it.
 
Indeed. Ryan, it's usually the pre-2005 MB that do that, btw. Usually. One thing that I've learned is that hardware is always NOT what you think it is. LOL.
 
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