Question Please can anyone help with this SATA drive locking out BIOS problem?

[Steve_E007]

I had a working system - AIMB-274 motherboard, Windows 10 and Seagate 500G laptop drive to boot from. 16G memory.

It died - the disk became corrupt. I had a clone which I replaced it with but got in a mess trying to get it going again. Short story, the PSU had leaking capacitors and the voltages were dodgy. Might well have been the reason the the disk corruption? Now have new PSU - plus an infuriating problem that is driving me NUTS.

I can boot the PC from a USB stick - I can also boot from a cloned disk I made some time ago, but it is very out of date. If I put in a new disk (I have a few thin laptop drives of the same type, plus a couple of Barracudas, all 500G) and using recovery software I can restore from a backup onto one of these disks. I have done this several times.

Here's the problem:
One disk (only) which is the old clone that is out of date, boots ok to Windows 10. Any other disk, if connected to the motherboard in any SATA port stops me from entering BIOS. It just sticks at the 'Press DEL or ESC to enter BIOS' screen and goes no further. I've tried three. If I boot with my one working disk I can place any of these three disks onto a SATA to usb converter and read it - they look fine, just like a cloned or restored Windows boot disk.

I can understand if the restore wasn't good that I might have a disk that fails to load Windows - but I can't understand it preventing me from accessing the BIOS?

In desperation, I formatted one of these disks via USB - this worked fine - put the blank disk in place of the working windows system disk, tried to boot the computer - and can't enter BIOS again. If I unplug everything - no disks no USB, the computer boots straight to BIOS.

I've tried changing SATA configuration and many other things, nothing works - but I can still boot off the one disk after the changes.

The disk that originally failed is not readable on a USB cable - I think the PSU killed it, but the fact that one Windows disk works for me makes me think the motherboard must be ok?

I just can't figure out why so many HDD which appear functional and can be formatted, read/written to seem to lock up the BIOS?

Any suggestion gratefully received!

Thank you

 

[Lutfij]

Welcome to the forums, newcomer!

Usually a drive that's impeding your system from going to OS GUI would indicate that the drive is meant to be retired.

I had a working system - AMB-274 motherboard, Windows 10 and Seagate 500G laptop drive to boot from. 16G memory.
When posting a thread of troubleshooting nature, it's customary to include your full system's specs. Please list the specs to your build like so:
CPU:
CPU cooler:
Motherboard:
Ram:
SSD/HDD:
GPU:
PSU:
Chassis:
OS:
Monitor:
include the age of the PSU apart from it's make and model. BIOS version for your motherboard at this moment of time.

the PSU had leaking capacitors and the voltages were dodgy. Might well have been the reason the the disk corruption? Now have new PSU - plus an infuriating problem that is driving me NUTS.
Buying a reliably build PSU with headroom in your wattage helps save your grey matter and your wallet, in the long run.

 

[Steve_E007]

Hi,

Thanks for the reply, here is the information in the required format. Not sure there is anything useful, though...

CPU: Intel i3
CPU cooler: It has one, no idea what it is, but it has worked successfully for several years.
Motherboard: Avantech AIMB-274
Ram: 2 x 8Gb
SSD/HDD: Seagate laptop thin 500G . Also tried Seagate Barracuda (new).
GPU: Integrated
PSU: Was a 300w, I can't remember the make and it is now scrapped. The new one is a Vida 500w ATX
Chassis: Generic PC box. Nothing special.
OS: Windows 10 - 64 bit
Monitor: Dell 15"

The previous power supply probably failed due to old age - I recycled the chassis and PSU when I rebuild the PC a few years ago. The NEW power supply is... brand new. Been running about two days?

The BIOS is AMIBIOS 2015. The board isn't that old, manufactured maybe 6 years ago? Had been in storage, though - I been using it for maybe 3 or 4 years.
The drives have been in storage, too. Some have been used, one is new old stock - I broke the seal on the packet.

 

[Misgar]

I've tried changing SATA configuration and many other things

I don't suppose you kept a written log of all the settings you tried and their initial values, so you could go back to the start if changes didn't work?

What SATA settings are you using when booting from the good drive? I'm guessing it's AHCI?

Do not set the BIOS to RAID, unless you intend to configure an array of drives.

CPU: Intel i3

Any particular i3? There are hundreds of i3's, although only a limited number are LGA 1150.

Motherboard: Avantech AIMB-274

The AIMB-274 manual I found is dated August 2013, which makes the design 12 years old.
https://advdownload.advantech.com/productfile/Downloadfile2/1-123HYOY/AIMB-274_user_manual_Ed1.pdf

With an LGA1150 board as old as yours and what appears to be an old (non-UEFI BIOS), there might be additional settings in 'SATA Mode Selection' such as IDE, Legacy, CSM as well as AHCI and RAID. I wouldn't expect them to cause the computer to hang, but they will stop the PC booting if set wrong.

The AIMB-274 manual (page 43) is not very helpful and doesn't list any of the settings available under 'SATA Mode Selection'. Try AHCI.

I can also boot from a cloned disk I made some time ago, but it is very out of date.

If you connect the computer to the internet and wait (a very long time), Windows Update will download dozens or hundreds of updates and ask you to reboot several times. Then you'll be up to date.

After October 2025, Windows 10 Home/Pro will not receive security updates. It's up to you, but perhaps a more modern PC would be better, or change to a Linux Distro.

Any suggestion gratefully received!

Buy a cheap SATA SSD, e.g. 120GB, 240GB, 480GB and perform a clean install of Windows (not a restore). Prices start around $15.

Set the BIOS to AHCI. Disconnect all other drives. Boot from Windows USB installation key.

It shouldn't take more than 30 minutes to install basic Windows on a slow computer. It'll take several hours to tweak Windows and install all your favourite programs, but it's better than restoring a (potentially) corrupted OS. An SSD will be much faster than booting from hard disk.

To make a bootable USB Windows installation key, download the Windows 10 ISO from the Microsoft web site.
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us...-windows-99a58364-8c02-206f-aa6f-40c3b507420d

The disk that originally failed is not readable on a USB cable - I think the PSU killed it, but the fact that one Windows disk works for me makes me think the motherboard must be ok?

If the PSU did indeed kill the disk drive, it could also have damaged the mobo. Have you considered buying a cheap second hand LGA 1150 mobo on eBay? Your board (below) shouldn't be too difficult to replace with something similar. It's not a rare (expensive) high-end full ATX board.

 

[Steve_E007]

Hi,
Thanks for the reply.
I changed the BIOS setting one at a time and then changed them back. There were not too many concerning the drives. Nothing altered the situation of one disk working but three others causing the BIOS to lock up. I then removed the CMOS battery for a few mins to reset the BIOS to the defaults. It made no difference - even with defaults one disk works, three not.

The processor is actually an i5 - 45709 @3.2GHz.

When I said the one disk was 'out of date' - I mean I have installed a lot of software on the other disks since that one was written (it was the basic Windows install). I'm not too worried about updating Windows, but reinstalling all the software (Licences, accounts passwords...) would be a pain and I don't want to attempt this until I get to the bottom of the problem. It is possible it is an intermittent hardware fault that is screwing up the drives - and just coincidence that it hasn't screwed up my working disk - YET!
The two clones I had were much more up to date (and tested successfully when they were written), plus I made a fresh disk from the backup. These are the three that will not allow BIOS to start 🙁

The board design may be 13 years old, but my board is a bit less than that and the BIOS definitely does have UEFI. The only SATA options are RAID, AHCI and IDE.

I have already decided to buy a new PC. I do not like Microsoft and they way they are trying to bully me into a subscription model (eg: Office 365) and I do not want Windows 11. I've put Linux Mint on another (even older) PC and it works really well - So Linux Mint on a new PC it is.
BUT...
Buying and setting up a new PC with a different OS - probably requiring new software as I suspect some of the tools I use are not available for Linux - with the associated learning curve, will be a big task that will take time (and be a pain, no doubt...)
I am a musician and I'm in the middle of a big project with parts written, some complete but not printed, some still at the editing stage and I really need to get *this* PC up and working to finish what I was doing.

I have found second hand AMBI 274s on eBay - but they want silly money!
I'm still not certain it is the motherboard, though, seems very odd that one Seagate drive will work on any of the SATA ports, making me think it is possible something is screwy with the data on the disks rather than the board.

Just tried a fourth disk. Another new (old stock) Seagate Barracuda - with no OS on it - just as it came out of the packet. This allows me to access BIOS the same as my 'out of date' disk. Obviously the PC can't boot from it, but BIOS sees it. I've plugged one of the clones that lock up BIOS into the laptop I am typing this reply on - and it reads it no problem. Just ran CHKDSK on it and it finds no errors.

I am completely at a loss as to why a disk that I can read and passes CHKDSK locks up my BIOS when others do not....???

I have a mSATA and an SSD disk available, so I will try that.

 

[Misgar]

I use Hard Disk Sentinel to keep an eye on all my hard disks. You can download an evaluation copy, but you need to buy it to unlock all the features.
https://www.hdsentinel.com/

If you can get your PC to boot into Windows, HD Sentinel will attempt to read the S.M.A.R.T. data on your drives and report their health. You might have to enable S.M.A.R.T. Reporting in your BIOS first.

Sometimes HD Sentinel can read S.M.A.R.T. data through a USB interface, so you might be able to check the bad drives when they're mounted in USB caddies.

This drive has potential problems.

This drive is toast.

You could run CHKDSK on any drives that don't hang the computer.

 

[Misgar]

I have found second hand AMBI 274s on eBay - but they want silly money!

You don't need to buy an identical mobo. Anything with the same socket (LGA 1150) and support for your CPU (which I suspect is an i5-4570) will do. If the board fits in your case and works with a 20-way ATX PSU connector plus 4-way CPU power, it should prove whether or not your AMBI 274 is bad.

Just swap the CPU + cooler, RAM and PSU over. If the problems persist, you'd need to swap out CPU, RAM and PSU until everything's been replaced.

I have a growing heap of dead hard disks. They don't last forever and some of yours may be bad.