Windows 10: Error adding a 2nd internal hard drive

From the OP:

That has absolutely nothing to do with the UEFI firmware trying to boot from the affected hard drive. This has to do with the UEFI reading the S.M.A.R.T. status from the controller onboard the hard drive itself. Is there a utility in the UEFI to check/display the S.M.A.R.T. status of the hard drives?

PassMark DiskCheckup - SMART hard drive monitoring utility

 

I'm not sure. On the correct drive I installed win 8.1 and believe it just formatted drive before install. I upgraded to win 10 from the free download (really not liking Win 10...seriouslly thinking of going back to 8). On the 2nd drive I am now trying to use, All I did was delete the partition, created a new and formatted it. I just re did it again and saw nothing about MBR or GPT

 

I believe the 2nd drive was used for Linux, but it is not in the boot order list in bios. The only drive in the boot order is the correct drive, but it still tries to load the wrong 1.

 

This is not my system. My system has Windows 10 now. Purchased with Win8 that was corrupted so I purchased Win8.1 and installed that, then last year win 10 installed during free upgrade period.
Intel I7 4 core 3.4ghz Processor
16GB DDR3 Ram
1TB West. Dig. internal drive (Correct working drive)
700GB Samsung Internal drive (This is problem drive)
3TB Seagate External USB/SATA Drive
3TB Toshiba External USB/SATA Drive
1TB West. Dig. External USB/SATA Drive (This is an old Internal drive put into an external case. Newer than the problem drive however.)
Mother board is an ASUS Model CM6330_CM6630_CM6730_CM^*#) (LGA1155)
Bios Amer. Mega. version 0404 date 9/28/2012
If anything else is needed le me know.

 

OK, I tried this. It says 1 or more SMART thresholds exceded. I am assuming the drive is bad and I should just can it Unless there is a way to fix it. But that doesn't explain why it keeps trying to load off it when it isn't in the boot list and has been formatted and reformatted numerous times.

 

What makes you believe it is "trying to load off of it"?

If you connect a failing hard drive to a system it can cause the system to lock up. So if the thing you are seeing is that the system goes immediately into the BIOS settings that does not mean that the system is trying to load from the second drive. It can just mean that the BIOS could not complete the routine and it quit and defaulted to the BIOS settings.

 

This would apply to the time you performed the Diskpart Clean All.
After a Clean All the disk is blank, unformatted, and unallocated. When your system (Disk Management) first encounters a blank disk like this it will ask if you want to initialize it. It is in that window that you would be asked if you want to use MBR or GPT format.

Linux system disks are often problematic to use as 2nd drives in Windows systems because they are formatted differently. But the Clean All will normally wipe out any foreign flags. These flags will cause problems even if the drive is not in the boot order.

 

The important spec I am curious about is the power supply. Brand, and total wattage.
The PS in that linked system was only 300 Watts. If it were a cheap brand then it is possible that the system is underpowered and that power fluctuation can cause symptoms like yours also.

 

OK so trying to load the 2nd drive might not be the correct thing to say. I just thought that since I can start up fine if I unplug the drive that something was trying to read the 2nd drive during startup.

 

It could just mean the second drive is bad, has a Linux flag on it, or your system does not have enough power to run a second hard drive.

 

The power supply 350W if I understand correctly. The label says AC/Bel HBA008-ZA1GT - 350
However, when running the disk checkup program suggested earlier in this thread, it showed there was an error on the "End-to-End" so I think I am going to just scrap this drive. It was only going to be used as a back-up for my internal Windows drive in case of problems. I can always get a new int or ext for 15-20 dollars. It doesn't need to be a large drive just large enough to back-up my internal that is at the largest size now and there is only a little over 400GB used. Thanks to everyone that tried to help.

 

Yep. Best not to mess around with problem hard drives. They will only disappoint in the end.