[SOLVED] Can a dying HDD cause problems with Windows that's installed on a whole different SSD?

[MxzsyXII]

So I've got Windows 11 installed on a WD Black SN750 500GB NVMe SSD. I used a 2tb WD Blue 5400RPM that I've had since 2017 for mass storage of games, movies, downloads, clips and everything in between. Recently (even when I was on Windows 10) my OS has been acting a bit funny. It randomly freezes and certain functions just won't work like opening the start menu, and refreshing the desktop would make all the apps disappear. it'll take a long time to restart or shudown. Windows explorer will sometimes just lock up and make my whole screen to white.

When it happened on windows 10 it went away after a day or 2. I did use the SFC /scannow and the DISM online restorehealth commands which both say they were complete and restored files. I've also tried defragging the drive after it started working again on windows 10. It analysed and optimiser but said the drive was 2% fragmented and it would not go away no matter how many times I used the windows tool to defrag. But it still happens. On windows 11 there was one instance where the drive disappeared and then next boot it reappeared

It's weird because it was fine for a few weeks since it happened on windows 10 but now it's happening again. The windows 11 is a fresh install. Even my GPU driver breaks and I think it may be because the instant replay is set to record to my HDD and it's set to use the disk storage as the buffer too instead of system ram.

I'm guessing it's a dying HDD or a damaged SATA cable/connection on the HDD, but I'd like to hear what you guys think and if any of you had anything like this before.

Thank you

 

[USAFRet]

As the system boots up, it checks ALL drives tht are connected.If one of them has an issue....problems.

Power OFF, disconnect all drives except the OS drive.
All works OK?

Power off, reconnect any other drives one by one until the issues replicates.

 

[punkncat]

A bad storage device hooked to the mobo SATA ports can cause a variety of problems. It is a base device and if it isn't working right the system is trying to see it, it drops out, and so on. I had an issue with one recently that passed scans and check disk and so forth but the system didn't actually operate properly until I unhooked it.

HDD are 'typically' good for about 5 years depending on use. I have some that have gone far further and some much less. Agree with the above to disconnect all storage aside from OS, boot, see if issue resolves and add storage back to see if issue persists upon a specific device.
Might not be a bad idea to consider removing this drive upon investigation, get yourself an external drive caddy and copy information off, if you can, to save that data ASAP.

 

[USAFRet]

HDD are 'typically' good for about 5 years depending on use. I have some that have gone far further and some much less.

I have a 7 month old 16TB Toshiba Enterprise...going in the box tomorrow, back to Toshiba for replacement.

 

[MxzsyXII]

Update: I've unplugged the HDD from the PC and it's working perfectly fine now. Tried to plug it back in and windows started crashing again.

I tried a different SATA port too but no dice. I think this drive is gone

 

[USAFRet]

Update: I've unplugged the HDD from the PC and it's working perfectly fine now. Tried to plug it back in and windows started crashing again.

I tried a different SATA port too but no dice. I think this drive is gone

Yep, it would appear to be a dead drive.

 

[MxzsyXII]

another update: i believe i know the reason of this drives death now. i recently upgraded my cpu and motherboard. i did a fresh windows 11 install on my nvme ssd. i used all the different game launchers, ie; steam, epic, origin, uplay, and blizzard, to verify all the games i had on my hdd so instead of reinstalling all of them i could continue as normal. now that i think about it, it mustve been reading and checking over 400gb worth of files. i didnt make them verify all the games at the exact same time, it was like one after the other, but i think that put the final nail in the coffin for this drive. i could already tell it was on its last legs since it would take a while to search for some files, there were bad/reallocated sectors showing on crystaldiskinfo, it wouldnt defragment beyond 2%, and a similar phenomenon occured for a day a couple weeks ago while i was using the old cpu, motherboard and windows 10.

i also have an anti sag bracket that has a magnetic base, its not a strong magnet but i put it on top of the drive mounting sled because thats how my case is orientated (bequiet 500DX). the base of the anti sag stand was probably about 1cm above the top of the HDD and had a couple millimetres worth of metal between them too. im not sure if that mightve influenced it because ive read that you need very strong magnets to affect the drive and that the casing of the drives provide enough protection from normal house magnets. what do u guys think?