Windows 10: Unusual HDD fault

Never seen an HDD fail in this way before.

My System One below has been working well for years, but on a Restart it failed to boot. Simple, I thought, I'll just boot from my Macrium rescue USB and restore a recent image. However, while I could bring up the boot device menu using F12 and select the USB it wouldn't boot from that either. However long I waited it would just sit on a black screen.

The only way to get the PC to boot from anything, USB, CD/DVD or HDD was to remove the original HDD. Controller failure? Not on the motherboard at least, I replace the HDD with one containing an installed Windows 10 and that booted correctly. The machine could also boot from USB while any HDD (apart from the original one) was present.

OK, so it must be the internal controller of the HDD that was at fault. But here comes the really strange bit - put it in an external USB housing and it is fully functional (read and write) and Chkdsk says it's healthy, BUT....

....if this disk is left connected, even in the USB enclosure, no PC it is connected to can boot from anything, its own HDD or a USB.

I'm not looking for help to fix this HDD. As I said, the drive is fully read/write functional and currently being cloned to a spare known good HDD.

What I'm asking is whether any of the HDD Gurus have come across a fault as strange as this - and if so, can they explain what exactly has failed?

:)

 

unlock hdd

Hi Johan,

It is possible that your
HDD was unreadable
causing the error message to appear. We recommend that you perform these troubleshooting steps and check if there are any changes:

• 
  Shutdown
  your
  PC.
  
• 
  Unhooked
  the
  HDD
  and
  turn on
  your
  PC.
  
• 
  Reconnect
  your
  HDD
  and
  restart
  your
  PC.
  

If the issue persists, we suggest that you contact your
laptop/computer's manufacturer
for further assistance.

Update us on how it goes.

Regards.

 

unlock hdd

 

HDD Corrupt ?

Hi,

There are many possible reasons this issue is happening. We'd like to ask few questions below:

• What is the brand name of you Hard Disk Drive?
  
• How old is the HDD?
  

Since you already tried multiple troubleshooting steps, we suggest visiting the manufacturer's website. Find and download a hard drive diagnostic software to help resolve the issue.

Let us know how it goes.