Question Secondary HDD causing no boot

[A_Goat]

Hey y'all,

Got a weird one for you. Building a computer for my father in law, and everything was going fine.
Window 10 is installed on an SSD, it's been up and running for days. I was pre-installing some games to the secondary HDD when some applications stopped responding, they wouldn't close, and I couldn't soft shut down. So, I did a hard shutdown with power button.

Windows would not boot after that, it would try to go into windows RE but would then black screen. I tried a couple other things to get into windows RE, but it would only end up on a black screen. I even tried accessing it via the windows boot media, but it would get stuck on the purple screen (wouldn't load the gui). Reset BIOS to defaults, tried everything again, no change.

But then, I unplugged the secondary drive, and it booted no problems. Ran repair, checked for issues, windows was operating with no issue. I then reconnected secondary HDD.... same issues as above. The heck?

My confusion here is why the secondary HDD would disable me from booting, let alone disable me from accessing windows boot media. I tried disabling the drive completely in BIOS, but when its connected, I cannot boot into anything windows.
I'm unsure how I can reformat it when I can't get to any windows environment, I unfortunately do not have an HDD to USB adapter to accomplish it from another computer. I'm worried to try installing it internally to my primary system, if it's that corrupted

Ryzen 5 5600G
16GB 3600
Gigabyte b450 Aorus M

 

[DRagor]

More likely it's just faulty HDD. There should be no risk trying it on your main system, if it behaves same then its dead drive.

 

[Bob.B]

Hey y'all,

Got a weird one for you. Building a computer for my father in law, and everything was going fine.
Window 10 is installed on an SSD, it's been up and running for days. I was pre-installing some games to the secondary HDD when some applications stopped responding, they wouldn't close, and I couldn't soft shut down. So, I did a hard shutdown with power button.

Windows would not boot after that, it would try to go into windows RE but would then black screen. I tried a couple other things to get into windows RE, but it would only end up on a black screen. I even tried accessing it via the windows boot media, but it would get stuck on the purple screen (wouldn't load the gui). Reset BIOS to defaults, tried everything again, no change.

But then, I unplugged the secondary drive, and it booted no problems. Ran repair, checked for issues, windows was operating with issue. I then reconnected secondary HDD.... same issues as above. The heck?

My confusion here is why the secondary HDD would disable me from booting, let alone disable me from accessing windows boot media. I tried disabling the drive completely in BIOS, but when its connected, I cannot boot into anything windows.
I'm unsure how I can reformat it when I can't get to any windows environment, I unfortunately do not have an HDD to USB adapter to accomplish it from another computer. I'm worried to try installing it internally to my primary system, if it's that corrupted

Ryzen 5 5600G
16GB 3600
Gigabyte b450 Aorus M

You might want to shop around and see if you can pick up an usb to disk cable.

There around 10/12 bucks and a handy thing to have when trying to make sense out of wonky stuff.