- Jul 17, 2016
- 11
- 0
- 1,510
Introduction
In time you will know the tragic extent of my failings...
Hey guys, I've used your website for a long time as an awesome resource to fix various errors and problems with many different things over my relatively short life of a mere 22 years. With that being said, I'm hoping some incredibly awesome and suave gentlemen or elegant ladies could help me with my own issue that's currently driving me crazy today.
I sincerely hope somebody or several somebodies can help me figure this out or at least give me a definitive diagnosis on the issue. If the drive is dead, the drive is dead. It served me faithfully for many years and the damage from losing my scripts can be restored over a few months. I'm not going to pay for a recovery team to excise the data, it's just not worth it. I'm a student and can't really afford another drive yet, dangerously low on money for food as it is, thank god for Twitch donations, lmao...
So again, if we conclusively decide it's 100% toast, then rest in peace, sweet prince and I'm incredibly grateful for everyone who takes their time out to help me and reach a just verdict.
Background
Pardon my incessant ramblings, I just hope they help.
Before I get to story time, here's some basic background info as I recently did a pretty significant upgrade a while ago:
OS: Windows 7: Home Premium ---> Windows 10: Home Premium
MOBO: GB Z68MA-D2H-B3 ---> Asus B150 Pro Gaming/Aura
GPU: GTX 760 x2 ---> GTX 980 Ti
CPU: i5-2400 ---> i7-6700k
RAM: DDR3 2x8 2400 ---> DDR4 4x8 2400
My storage is as follows:
Less than a month later my 3rd HDD I've had for quite a long time suddenly died? This isn't heartbreaking, but isn't that great for me either of course. Before I installed Windows 10 I nuked my 2 HDDs, which I know is totally overkill, but I've never done it before and wanted to try it. Before I did though, I kept some important scripts I had written for my streaming bot on Twitch and after Windows 10 was installed, I moved them back over to the drive.
About a week later, my E: drive started to 'flicker' in and out of my computer. I affirmed the connections and it still continued to flicker, so I decided to replace all of the cables. Another day later it just stopped working completely, but the drive wasn't totally dead as it was still spinning. However Windows couldn't recognize it anymore, but thankfully my BIOS still could. I tried to recover some data via a CD recovery program, but it didn't work. A day later after that, BIOS couldn't see it either.
I bought an HDD 3.5-inch Enclosure to see if it'd recognize that, but it did not. So, I installed/updated a bunch of USB drivers I thought was probably missing and sure enough, the HDD showed up in my computer. I basically shot out of my chair, I finally got it working! However, as evidenced by my thread and current apathetic mood that was clearly short lived as I realized something was seriously wrong quickly.
My PC was running incredibly slowly, all of my icons were gone, I couldn't click on the drive or acknowledge its existence in any way or it would spaz out and call me names. Which means the window would freeze and I'd have to spam the 'close' button until it finally went through. When I checked my Task Manager's performance tab and looked at my 3rd storage drive it was running at 100% usage, while the other two hovered on 0 percent...
Defeated 'Solutions'
Failed solutions; this is where most end up, covered in the poisoned earth...
As brevity is the soul of wit, I'll post a quick list showcasing some admirable, yet mistaken attempts at solving my issue gathered from the farthest hypothetical corners of the Internet...
Interesting Anomalies
Such curious machinations take form to thwart me.
I have some interesting information before I post the thread that I'm too inexperienced right now to read into what could actually be the root of the problem:
The moment I press the power button on my enclosure to power it and the HDD down, my rig immediately exits its catatonic state that it only gets when started with the enclosure running from the get go. The icons are all restored, Windows reports that the 'media' I had plugged in has been ejected and any application/process I tried to run or that typically normally runs while it's starting up is basically awoken from limbo and starts without incident or argument.
If I restart my computer now and try to get to the desktop with the enclosure already running, the screen is black and doesn't progress further after 15 minutes. My POST was about 5 minutes, but now it's just black if I leave it on. Only way to escape this black screen is shutting down the PC physically via the button or severing the connection to the enclosure. If I try to start the enclosure and the evil contained inside it spurs to life normally and the lights blink 'ready', and Windows even reports a new addition, but no HDD appears nor any excruciatingly painful lag.
I decided to 'exit' Windows via Shift + Restart to try Safe Mode and got to the 'Command Prompt' area at X:\Windows\System32\cmd.exe or something like that. I know it had an "X" for the driver letter. Anyway, I tried to diskpart and actually got the drive to show up there after I rescanned numerous times. I managed to even list the drive via list disk. It showed me my 1st and 2nd disks were both healthy, but the third disk had the same storage as the 2nd, but its status was appropriately labelled as 'Unknown'. If I tried to select it or interact in any real way with it the cmd prompt would lag a bit and then report that I couldn't access it/no drive existed or whatever. When I rescanned to see if it was still there it had vanished along with my ember of hope.
Closing
This is my first help request thread for a PC, I pray it shall be my last!
Again guys and gals of this incredibly resourceful website, I really appreciate any help or insight the community here can give me. I have this sinking feeling that the drive is indeed dead, but I really need a definitive answer as those scripts and my wallet cannot afford any replacements right now.
But regardless, thanks for reading and know I'll be watching this thread like a hawk!
- Jordan 'Norveejun' Harris
In time you will know the tragic extent of my failings...
Hey guys, I've used your website for a long time as an awesome resource to fix various errors and problems with many different things over my relatively short life of a mere 22 years. With that being said, I'm hoping some incredibly awesome and suave gentlemen or elegant ladies could help me with my own issue that's currently driving me crazy today.
I sincerely hope somebody or several somebodies can help me figure this out or at least give me a definitive diagnosis on the issue. If the drive is dead, the drive is dead. It served me faithfully for many years and the damage from losing my scripts can be restored over a few months. I'm not going to pay for a recovery team to excise the data, it's just not worth it. I'm a student and can't really afford another drive yet, dangerously low on money for food as it is, thank god for Twitch donations, lmao...
So again, if we conclusively decide it's 100% toast, then rest in peace, sweet prince and I'm incredibly grateful for everyone who takes their time out to help me and reach a just verdict.
Background
Pardon my incessant ramblings, I just hope they help.
Before I get to story time, here's some basic background info as I recently did a pretty significant upgrade a while ago:
OS: Windows 7: Home Premium ---> Windows 10: Home Premium
MOBO: GB Z68MA-D2H-B3 ---> Asus B150 Pro Gaming/Aura
GPU: GTX 760 x2 ---> GTX 980 Ti
CPU: i5-2400 ---> i7-6700k
RAM: DDR3 2x8 2400 ---> DDR4 4x8 2400
My storage is as follows:
■ [C:] Primary: Just a 120 GB SSD that my OS and other small stuff run on. (OCZ Agility 3)
■ [D:] Secondary: Functional 1 TB HDD main storage that I use for general use. (WD10EALX)
■ [E:] Tertiary: Broken 1 TB HDD I used for videos, music, docs, etc. (Barracuda ST1000)
Less than a month later my 3rd HDD I've had for quite a long time suddenly died? This isn't heartbreaking, but isn't that great for me either of course. Before I installed Windows 10 I nuked my 2 HDDs, which I know is totally overkill, but I've never done it before and wanted to try it. Before I did though, I kept some important scripts I had written for my streaming bot on Twitch and after Windows 10 was installed, I moved them back over to the drive.
About a week later, my E: drive started to 'flicker' in and out of my computer. I affirmed the connections and it still continued to flicker, so I decided to replace all of the cables. Another day later it just stopped working completely, but the drive wasn't totally dead as it was still spinning. However Windows couldn't recognize it anymore, but thankfully my BIOS still could. I tried to recover some data via a CD recovery program, but it didn't work. A day later after that, BIOS couldn't see it either.
I bought an HDD 3.5-inch Enclosure to see if it'd recognize that, but it did not. So, I installed/updated a bunch of USB drivers I thought was probably missing and sure enough, the HDD showed up in my computer. I basically shot out of my chair, I finally got it working! However, as evidenced by my thread and current apathetic mood that was clearly short lived as I realized something was seriously wrong quickly.
My PC was running incredibly slowly, all of my icons were gone, I couldn't click on the drive or acknowledge its existence in any way or it would spaz out and call me names. Which means the window would freeze and I'd have to spam the 'close' button until it finally went through. When I checked my Task Manager's performance tab and looked at my 3rd storage drive it was running at 100% usage, while the other two hovered on 0 percent...
Defeated 'Solutions'
Failed solutions; this is where most end up, covered in the poisoned earth...
As brevity is the soul of wit, I'll post a quick list showcasing some admirable, yet mistaken attempts at solving my issue gathered from the farthest hypothetical corners of the Internet...
■ Power adjustments were made. Sadly, without desirable effect on my problem.
■ USB cable is most definitely not the issue.
■ The commands net.exe stop superfetch and net.exe stop "Windows search" were absent victory.
■ Command Prompt's usual champion the chkdsk E: /r command was woefully silent this time around.
■ RAID isn't the issue in the BIOS.
Interesting Anomalies
Such curious machinations take form to thwart me.
I have some interesting information before I post the thread that I'm too inexperienced right now to read into what could actually be the root of the problem:
The moment I press the power button on my enclosure to power it and the HDD down, my rig immediately exits its catatonic state that it only gets when started with the enclosure running from the get go. The icons are all restored, Windows reports that the 'media' I had plugged in has been ejected and any application/process I tried to run or that typically normally runs while it's starting up is basically awoken from limbo and starts without incident or argument.
If I restart my computer now and try to get to the desktop with the enclosure already running, the screen is black and doesn't progress further after 15 minutes. My POST was about 5 minutes, but now it's just black if I leave it on. Only way to escape this black screen is shutting down the PC physically via the button or severing the connection to the enclosure. If I try to start the enclosure and the evil contained inside it spurs to life normally and the lights blink 'ready', and Windows even reports a new addition, but no HDD appears nor any excruciatingly painful lag.
I decided to 'exit' Windows via Shift + Restart to try Safe Mode and got to the 'Command Prompt' area at X:\Windows\System32\cmd.exe or something like that. I know it had an "X" for the driver letter. Anyway, I tried to diskpart and actually got the drive to show up there after I rescanned numerous times. I managed to even list the drive via list disk. It showed me my 1st and 2nd disks were both healthy, but the third disk had the same storage as the 2nd, but its status was appropriately labelled as 'Unknown'. If I tried to select it or interact in any real way with it the cmd prompt would lag a bit and then report that I couldn't access it/no drive existed or whatever. When I rescanned to see if it was still there it had vanished along with my ember of hope.
Closing
This is my first help request thread for a PC, I pray it shall be my last!
Again guys and gals of this incredibly resourceful website, I really appreciate any help or insight the community here can give me. I have this sinking feeling that the drive is indeed dead, but I really need a definitive answer as those scripts and my wallet cannot afford any replacements right now.
But regardless, thanks for reading and know I'll be watching this thread like a hawk!
- Jordan 'Norveejun' Harris
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