Windows 10: can not boot with extra hdds connected ?

My system has been stable for years.....but recently - with no hardware changes - my system will not boot with certain SSDs HDDs attached inside the box. What happens is startup freezes at press F2 or Del to enter bios and boot device error red led light blinking on the board

Have three drives now that if attached...will cause above error...and inability to boot to Windows 10....two of them are internal - one ssd and one ide - and one external USB drive.

If I unplug these internal/external drives...my system boots but can not obviously access any of these drives ?

Can I unplug these drives and then replug them in after successful boot...I guess this would be a 'hot' connection of the system power lines to the various drive(s) once windows loads and starts

Hard to believe that all three of these drive failed at the same time ?

All three drives pass both Windows Seatools tests and boot to dos Seatools tests ??

Any ideas....have lots and lots of data files on these auxiliary drives I would hate to loose if possible to solve this

Thanks...TiminAz

:)

 

BSOD before Windows starts - only when secondary HDDs are plugged in

Hi,

Then the only thing I can think of is a driver issue with the NVME M.2 drive, or the possibility that something is happening to your boot order when the extra drives are plugged in...

It's not unusual for the addition of extra drives to mess up the boot order...

HDD #1 sometimes gets changed... Sometimes the machine may be successful in trying HDD #2 for instance, and sometimes not...

 

System Reserve Partition

In installing Windows 10 on my PC with an SSD and HDD I ended up with the OS on both drives and booting from the HDD. I now have the computer booting from the SSD as I initially planned and have reformatted the HDD to eliminate the extra copy of the OS.
However, I still have a "System Reserve Partition" on both drives. Can I remove the partition on the HDD(which does not contain the OS)? How do I go about that?

 

Hi Tim.

When you enter your bios what is the boot order or priority. Please confirm it is the order you want. If BIOS is forgetting then time for a new coin battery, usually a 2032.

Rather than hot connecting, place your device in sleep and then connect. If the drives are find then the data should be fine.

Before doing this please confirm you don't have any raids set up with these drives.


Ken

 

Install MiniTool Partition Wizard Free to review the partitions on those drives. Look for any partitions marked active on those drives and set them to inactive. Having other active partitions in addition to the main one needed on your system drive can cause boot problems.

You'll need a bootable Partition Wizard disk if you can't boot your PC. It's hard to find the free version but I located it here https://downloads.tomsguide.com/Mini...301-51034.html

 

Thanks guys...noticed one important quirk....I added a new external dvd/usb 3.0 drive recently...plugged into a usb 3 port. Have discovered if I boot with that usb external attached...I either can't get past the del/F2 screen....or I get a total black screen when/if Win 10 loads

Seems if External usb is attached...no boot or black screen boot...if I unplug the drive prior to startup...then every thing seems to work fine ( drive is supposed to be 'hot swap between USB3 and USB2 slot' compliant )

(USB drive tho doesn't appear in bios screen at boot as an option other 2nd internal DVD "Sata" does)

Any ideas on why the usb drive can not be plugged into a usb 3 port (tried various ports both 3 and 2 usb versions) if starting from a cold start or even restart/reboot from a working session ?

Have Minitool Partition and will check in further on that (previous replay) later this week

TiminAz

 

Could be just as Steve C says with a mix of my suggestion to check boot order.

Your boot priority is set to look at USB ports first and it sees a partition marked active.

When you got this drive did you clone something on to it. Did it come with special software for recovery?

 

OK guys....things back to normal and running fine.....did a little more searching and found info on bios settings/USB issues
Apparently similar issues appear on systems with any usb external device and bios boot settings. Went into my bios and found advanced USB settings...not sure exactly what I changed but after removing any usb devices from boot settings or boot order...everything works fine again. Apparently this bios gets confused or looks for boot systems on all drives and for some reason it froze when it found the usb external drive connected but not having any boot settings ?

 

Great.

It would be worth it to go back into BIOS and note settings. This way if you have to reset BIOS to fix a different issue, (maybe even a dead CMOS battery) you won't be in this jam.

 

Well guys this really had me going....solved the problem of the external dvd player freezeing my system at the bios screen - issue was apparently that with default bios settings....the system looked at both the boot ssd drive...and also the attached usb drive/port that was causing the problems. Changed a few settings in bios to NOT look at any usb boot devices and voila...system now boots fine with usb DVD drive plugged into Sata 3 port on back of box. Now I have just one last older Sata internal HDD that is causing the same problem (never use to). If I boot with this older prior issue HDD, system freezes at Press F2/Delete to enter bios. If I detache the power to this one drive....system boots fine...no bios screen freeze. If I reconnect the power cable to the drive after successful boot...system and drive are fine ?What would cause this one sata HDD drive to freeze the boot process (like the USB external drive)...but when disconnected and then reconnected, to work flawlessly when reconnected after system boot up past the F2/Delete screen ? Had this drive for a couple years and no previous issues like this with this or any of the HDDs in box ?

Thanks....TiminAz

 

Could you please enter your BIOS and look at the boot order. Is your primary boot disk the first one in the list?

 

Thanks Ken...not at my home system now but the only drive listed in bios boot is the main Sara ssd...cleared all other drives during this process...but u reminded me to reactivate the DVD drive....Thanks

 

Okay, but to clarify. If you have your SSD connected and this HDD only the SSD shows in BIOS as a connected drive.

Then you boot and if the HDD is connected the boot stops.

Is this correct?

 

Well....serious progress....my system now boots past the bios screen, shows all my drives.... and into Windows normally...which also shows all my drives and I can access....copy, paste, format etc without any issues which is much welcomed new !!

One new issue tho....whether I cold start our restart... it takes a LONG time to get to the Windows splash screen. From the time I cold start or restart its between 7 min 55 seconds and 8 min 40 seconds !!

However...everything works consistently and all drives remain listed and accessible...just takes a long time to get there ?

Any ideas on what would be slowing down the boot into windows that much...and/or how to trouble shoot this issue ? Windows used to startup within seconds of the bios screen closing ?

Thanks...TiminAz

 

I was having the same problem with a 3tb drive partitioned as GPT in win7, win10 would gasp and throw fits with it plugged in, would even give "Driver Power State Failure" messages, then reboots would be super long time.

I finally resolved by booting linux mint liveusb, copy the data off the drive, and partitioned again as gpt and formatted ntfs.

Then all these issues went away with win10. Win7 never had boot problems, but could not use the drive if it had been setup in win10, and win10 had serious issues if the drive had been set up in win7.