Hello, I am building a computer for a sibling of mine for this Christmas, I've installed all my parts and saved a copy of the Windows installer to a flash drive. My bios is correctly setup. The HDD is 1 TB and uses SATA 3. My bios is set to AHCI and is programmed to boot of the flash drive first. The strange thing is, whenever I boot up the PC with the HDD plugged into a SATA port it takes up to 15 minutes to just load the first page of the Windows installer. However, if I boot it without the HDD plugged in it takes around 5 - 15 seconds. I have HOTPLUG enabled on the port I'm using (SATA 0) and can plug the HDD in at anytime during the Windows installation. It takes hours just to get to the "copying files" part and stays at 0% for longer than I was willing to wait before restarting, but if I unplug the HDD during the license agreement area it goes back to normal speeds. I have made a bootable USB of Hirens.Boot and that works at a normal speed with the HDD in or out. I've never used Hirens before but I think it has some sort of disk tester on it. Some help on how to use that would be nice. I'm not sure what's going on here, and could really use some help. Thanks guys!
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Strange Hard drive behavior when installing Windows
- Thread starter Bryce940
- Start date
SuperSoph_WD
Glorious
- Jul 30, 2014
- 6,758
- 3
- 45,960
Welcome to Tom's Hardware, Bryce!
I'd recommend you to use your HDD manufacturer's diagnostic tool to test the drive's health and SMART status. You should be able to find such a utility on their website. In case you can't, here are some pretty good third-party testing tools you can use as well: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/282651-32-best-diagnostic-testing-utility
If you are unable to boot into Windows, you should find a DOS version of the tools that will let you check up on the health without booting into any OS. Another alternative would be to plug the HDD in a different computer and test from there.
Keep me posted with the troubleshooting! Hope this helps you!
SuperSoph_WD
I'd recommend you to use your HDD manufacturer's diagnostic tool to test the drive's health and SMART status. You should be able to find such a utility on their website. In case you can't, here are some pretty good third-party testing tools you can use as well: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/282651-32-best-diagnostic-testing-utility
If you are unable to boot into Windows, you should find a DOS version of the tools that will let you check up on the health without booting into any OS. Another alternative would be to plug the HDD in a different computer and test from there.
Keep me posted with the troubleshooting! Hope this helps you!
SuperSoph_WD
SuperSoph_WD :
Welcome to Tom's Hardware, Bryce!
I'd recommend you to use your HDD manufacturer's diagnostic tool to test the drive's health and SMART status. You should be able to find such a utility on their website. In case you can't, here are some pretty good third-party testing tools you can use as well: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/282651-32-best-diagnostic-testing-utility
If you are unable to boot into Windows, you should find a DOS version of the tools that will let you check up on the health without booting into any OS. Another alternative would be to plug the HDD in a different computer and test from there.
Keep me posted with the troubleshooting! Hope this helps you!
SuperSoph_WD
I'd recommend you to use your HDD manufacturer's diagnostic tool to test the drive's health and SMART status. You should be able to find such a utility on their website. In case you can't, here are some pretty good third-party testing tools you can use as well: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/282651-32-best-diagnostic-testing-utility
If you are unable to boot into Windows, you should find a DOS version of the tools that will let you check up on the health without booting into any OS. Another alternative would be to plug the HDD in a different computer and test from there.
Keep me posted with the troubleshooting! Hope this helps you!
SuperSoph_WD
Thank you,
will for sure check out your suggestions as soon as I get a chance, but would like to point out that I did try plugging it into my main tower. I check my bios and it is set to boot off my ssd soon. When I booted it on, it slowed to a crawl when trying to load windows even though it was loading off a completely different drive. When I unplugged it, my tower booted in its normal 15 seconds.
SuperSoph_WD
Glorious
- Jul 30, 2014
- 6,758
- 3
- 45,960
Hey there again, Bryce!
It's highly possible that the HDD is going bad, unfortunately! 🙁
If it influences the performance like that even in your tower, you might be dealing with a failing/damaged drive. My other suggestion would be to try troubleshooting it externally by connecting it via a SATA-to-USB cable or using a docking station. Another option would be to run a DOS version of an HDD diagnostic tool, which would let you test the drive without booting into any OS.
Let me know how it goes!
SuperSoph_WD
It's highly possible that the HDD is going bad, unfortunately! 🙁
If it influences the performance like that even in your tower, you might be dealing with a failing/damaged drive. My other suggestion would be to try troubleshooting it externally by connecting it via a SATA-to-USB cable or using a docking station. Another option would be to run a DOS version of an HDD diagnostic tool, which would let you test the drive without booting into any OS.
Let me know how it goes!
SuperSoph_WD
I manager to boot into a linux distro from my hirens hsb. I did a smart test, and its over health passed, however, in the output box most of its tests were labeled as old age or pre failure. (maybe is should not buy another hdd refurbished again...). Anyway, I decided to use a disk cleaner with on the os, and deleted all of the drives contents with it. (took about 2 hours it's 1tb). After that I loaded the windows installer, and it worked at normal speed. It booted in 10 seconds and going through it was snappy as well. Not sure why that seemed to fix it. Anyway, I pressed install windows and it started copying files. I waited about 10-20 minutes and it was at 0% the whole time. Is that normal? Also, when I was deleting the drive it was deleting at a speed between 100-170 mbps. Is that normal too? Thanks:
SuperSoph_WD
Glorious
- Jul 30, 2014
- 6,758
- 3
- 45,960
Hey there again, Bryce!
The Linux-based utilities tend to be very accurate! I'd strongly recommend you to check the warranty on your HDD and if it's still covered, contact the manufacturer's customer support. This way you'd be able to RMA it and get a replacement.
I'd also suggest you to try the drive in another computer and test it with a Windows-based diagnostic tool again.
Keep me posted.
SuperSoph_WD
The Linux-based utilities tend to be very accurate! I'd strongly recommend you to check the warranty on your HDD and if it's still covered, contact the manufacturer's customer support. This way you'd be able to RMA it and get a replacement.
I'd also suggest you to try the drive in another computer and test it with a Windows-based diagnostic tool again.
Keep me posted.
SuperSoph_WD
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