Mobo refuses to boot / PC freezes when certain non-boot HD connected.

[wisewoman]

Hello,

So a strange one i think..

I sys-prepped my old 2TB Win7 Western Digital C: drive in preparation for new mobo.

New Asus Z87M-plus mobo installed but when old HD attached it just froze at the initial ASUS UEFI Bios press Del/F2 screen and I am unable to get into BIOS. After much head scratching I worked out that my old C: drive messes something up. If i disconnect it the system behaves as normal.

So I reinstalled Win7 to a separate, 500GB, SATA HD - all working absolutely fine. As i wanted the stuff off my old HD I set it up in an external USB caddy. - I can see it fine in Windows and have been able to copy my old stuff off. However, my main drive is now only 500GB 🙁

I have periodically reattached my old Win7 to a spare SATA port but same thing happens - system will not boot. I have also hot plugged it into SATA after Win7 has started and my Win7 device manager wont see it either! Yet it will happily see it, if the 2TB is in a USB external caddy.

To add to this strangeness, if i try to boot my computer with the 2TB in its USB caddy attached the system will again not boot and freezes!

I now don't need the 2TB to be my boot drive but I would like it as an extra working drive in SATA mode connected straight to my mobo. I have tried different SATA cables and slots on the mobo but always the same - the second its connected then PC freezes and thus no boot from the 500GB boot drive.

I suspect there must be something on my old 2TB, maybe in boot sector that's messing things up? The UEFI BIOS / mobo is not happy whether plugged in via SATA or USB caddy and this freezes the system anyway. Windows 7 disk management will only see it if plugged in via USB caddy - and works with it quite happily!

Any ideas why this 2TB is being so temperamental?

As a last resort I will just try a full format and see if it works then but due to space constraints Id rather keep some of the stuff on the 2TB drive and just get the BIOS and WIndows 7 to be happy with it.

Hope this makes sense!

Thanks
Melissa

 

[chesteracorgi]

A possible solution for you is to use something like MiniTool partition Wizard (freeware available at download.com). Boot the computer without the old HDD connected. Once booted connect the HDD either via SATA or the USB caddy. Boot up Partition Wizard. Delete the old partitions on the old HDD. Repartition the old HDD and format it. It may resolve the problem with the old HDD.

BTW, you can resize the partition of your main drive with Partition Wizard to use its full capacity.

 

[SortNVF]

If you did what chester said and the comp just instantly shut down. Most likely something on the old HDD PCB fried (diodes) and its now sending out some error current causing your PSU to shut down.

If you didnt do it allready, id suggest measuring the diodes on the PCB before proceeding with just plugging it in. My WD drive didnt spin atall but part of the PCB heated up (to wery hot) when i plugged the HDD to an external PSU (special one designed for connecting to drives)