HDD Caddy only recognized in BIOS and OS boots only when PC is quickly turned off then on.

[Moribund]

I have an ASUS x555LA laptop. It had an issue where the BIOS stopped recognizing hard drives. It's the SATA controller chip on the motherboard that failed (the small PCB whose one end connects to the drive, and the other end - to mainboard via a ribbon cable). Regardless of what drive was put in the drive bay - BIOS failed to see it. I have flashed BIOS but the problem didn't go away. I posted in Tom's Hardware. Was advised to purchase an HDD caddy for the DVD-ROM and pop the drive in it and boot it that way. (it's basically just a SATA to mini SATA adapter). I did exactly that. BIOS recognized the drive and immediately the system booted. Thought that would solve the problem. Not quite...

What happens now is every time I turn on the PC - I get taken straight to BIOS which doesn't see the drive in the HDD caddy. The only way to boot the system is to turn the laptop quickly off and on via power button. Then - the HDD LED flashes and system boots OK. It does this every time now, it's been like that for days. 1. Turn on - it goes to BIOS. 2. Turn off then on - system boots. It's not really intermittent - where sometimes it boots, sometimes - doesn't. Without fail - it boots but only if turned off then on. Every time. It's like having to turn it on twice for it to work. I disabled Intel virtualization technology thinking it to be the problem, but it didn't fix this issue. How do I fix this issue so the system boots the first time I press the power button? (Yes the HDD is the first boot device). Could it be my BIOS settings? if so - which ones? Appreciate any ideas you people could throw my way.

 

[photonboy]

It seems to me this is a weird issue that requires something to have sufficient POWER before it's being detected.

If you REBOOT from within Windows do you go back to Windows?

If you make a bootable USB stick, unhook all HDD/SSD devices internally will you boot to the USB stick (like MEMTEST86) every time or go directly to the BIOS?

I'd be surprised if there was an obvious way to fix this since there's no need to change BIOS settings so what else is there you can actually do?

 

[SkyNetRising]

One possible reason for such behavior is, if your laptop is set to
boot into UEFI first, then legacy boot.
If OS is installed into legacy mode, then
laptop boots, can't boot into UEFI and goes into BIOS,
after restart it tries next option and boots into legacy mode successfully.

First - verify that this indeed is the case. Post screenshot from Disk Management.
If your system boots from MBR partitioned drive - it's legacy mode.
If it boots from GPT drive, then it's UEFI mode being used.

 

[Moribund]

One possible reason for such behavior is, if your laptop is set to
boot into UEFI first, then legacy boot.
If OS is installed into legacy mode, then
laptop boots, can't boot into UEFI and goes into BIOS,
after restart it tries next option and boots into legacy mode successfully.

First - verify that this indeed is the case. Post screenshot from Disk Management.
If your system boots from MBR partitioned drive - it's legacy mode.
If it boots from GPT drive, then it's UEFI mode being used.

To answer both of you 1. Photonoy: Yes, it boots straight to USB device no problem whether it's a stick or DVD RAM when it's the only device connected, or when I set it in BIOS as primary boot device. If I reboot or the system reboots (like during installation or updates) it goes back to Windows no problem. So you may be correct in assuming this is a power issue - this happens when starting cold from 0 power state to 1. However the only quirk here is that it has no problem with USB devices booting from zero power state 2. SkyNeRrising I have no idea how to post a picture here. Apparently first I need to open a web site that hosts pictures then link to it. I don't have a site so that won't work. It's either that or it must be so counter intuitive it will take me a year to figure it out :-( LOL So it will suffice to say that in Disk Management all partitions are simple NTFS partitions - system reserved, C, and D (Backup partition). When I installed Windows I made sure to partition in NTFS . So should I then change BIOS settings to disable UEFI boot?

 

[Moribund]

Problem is - that when it does this (boots straight to BIOS) - the HDD is not visible. Like it's not there. Turn off and immediately turn on - it either loads Windows or, (if I press F2) - goes to BIOS again, but now the HDD is visible again. To make it visible (or alternatively - to boot the system, - I must first turn off and quickly on again). It's a freshly installed OS, and a clone of this drive exhibits exactly the same behaviour

 

[SkyNetRising]

I have no idea how to post a picture here.

Upload your picture to imgur.com or tinypic.com and post link.

 

[Moribund]

I have no idea how to post a picture here.

Upload your picture to imgur.com or tinypic.com and post link.

LOL just take my word for it. It's MBR (Legacy mode). It's the same whether checked from "Volumes" tab in Disk Management or through CMD. What settings in BIOS do I need to change? (Right now the only difference from default is Secure Boot and Virtualization Technology have been disabled). Hard Drive in HDD caddy is the primary and the only boot device).

Another question I have is, since, as I said earlier, - when this happens from a cold start - the HDD is not visible in BIOS at all. So it doesn't seem like it has trouble finding the OS, but rather the actual drive. To have the drive appear in BIOS, I need to turn PC off then quickly on, and press F2. Then the drive appears or if I don't press F2 and let it boot - the system will load. Since it's a new OS, and clone of the drive behaves the same way, does it not seem more likely there is some kind of power issue with the mainboard as the OP suggested? Especially since initially, the reason I got the HDD caddy is malfunction of the PCB that fails to detect SATA connected drives? What do you think?

 

[SkyNetRising]

Then make sure - UEFI boot is disabled.

Also disable fast boot and there might be an option to increase wait time for HDD initialization.

 

[Moribund]

Then make sure - UEFI boot is disabled.

Also disable fast boot and there might be an option to increase wait time for HDD initialization.

I'm afraid there is no separate UEFI boot option in this notebook's BIOS. There is PXE OpRom Policy (controlling the execution of UEFI and Legacy PXE OpRom/booting from server) - and it's disabled. No fast boot option either and no option to increase wait time. Secure boot control is disabled as well. Launch CSM is enabled, however. (it is my understanding that it needs to be enabled in order to boot to Legacy mode and that without it I could only boot to UEFI). Correct? Not sure what I else I could change?

 

[Moribund]

I've tried every BIOS option I can think of. It's still doing exactly the same thing. BIOS. Turn off. Turn on. OS loads. Could this in any way be related to a tumbler switch inside the HDD caddy? If not I will assume this laptop is just screwed and I wasted lots of my time and some cash to try and fix it.

 

[Moribund]

It seems to me this is a weird issue that requires something to have sufficient POWER before it's being detected.

If you REBOOT from within Windows do you go back to Windows?

If you make a bootable USB stick, unhook all HDD/SSD devices internally will you boot to the USB stick (like MEMTEST86) every time or go directly to the BIOS?

I'd be surprised if there was an obvious way to fix this since there's no need to change BIOS settings so what else is there you can actually do?

Crap. Just realised I got the wrong caddy. This one doesn't have a tumbler switch, it's as basic as they come. Another thing I noticed is that sometimes when I initiate a shutdown, - one of the LEDs (with a light bulb symbol next to it) stays on. Like it hasn't completely shut down. And it won't turn on when that happens, unless I hold the power switch to completely shut it down first. Then - I have to start it up TWICE so that it finds the HDD and boots the OS instead of just going to BIOS.

Anyway, folks, thanks for trying to help but it seems like this problem doesn't have a solution. It could be some quirk of the HDD caddy, perhaps its not fully compatible with this laptop and I need to get one with a tumbler switch. Or it could be because this laptop's SATA reader PCB was screwed to begin with and couldn't read drives connected via SATA.

But at the very least, - 2 seems to be the magic number, - starting it up twice boots the OS without fail every single time, so as long as it stays this way, - I can at least use it for work, which is still a definite plus. I was also able to update Windows 10 to latest build and install security updates, this problem did not interfere with update process. So knock on wood - hopefully it will last a couple of years before I save up on a new laptop, and it definitely won't be ASUS as every ASUS product I purchased in the last decade was utter garbage with intermittent hardware problems. :-(