Hard Drive detection problems

linkin

linkin

VIP Member
Ok, so ever since i built my system I have had HDD issues.
My system will sometimes randomly get this error upon starting

"BOOT DISK FAILURE, INSERT SYSTEM DISK AND PRESS ENTER"

Naturally, i power down and check the HDD connections and all is good. I boot up again one of these 3 things will happen:

1) A blinking underscore appears on the screen and the sustem just sits there
2) I will get the boot disk failure error again
3) Everything will start up fine and run normally

Now, if the drive decides to work it will work fast and flawlessly. It doesn't fail to read/write data anywhere and i have run chkdsk and such with no errors found. When it doesn't work I'll unplug the power, unplug the drive (SATA and Power) wait a while and reconnect everything. I've tried different SATA cables and different SATA ports, So i think something is dodgy. I've cleared the CMOS and loaded optimisied defaults and it still occurs. The drive is brand new, it came sealed in the original box and everything. It has scuffing marks from me installing it but that's it. This has been happening more frequently the last 2 days. It's starting to get annoying having open it up and reconnect everything just to get the system to boot.

EDIT: It seems to working fine again now... I think i'll consider a BIOS update, becuase i booted into windows it installed a driver for HDD, which it never did before...
 
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Since you have had a few problems with it and its a older board, have you tried to replace the motherboard battery.
 
Yeah i did that, even though the mobo was new. Today, it didnt work again, so i jiggled the sata cable on both ends and it's working again. seems like a connection with the calbe... 99c cables :P
 
Ok guys, it stopped working again, so i disconnected the whole computer and moved the HDD up one bay, reconnected everything and it boots the first time... This is getting strange, if it keeps happening i may just have to use my warranty. I still think it is a connection problem, because it works perfect... when it works!
 
Something else strange... once it works, if i reboot or sleep the computer it still works fine. but about 60% of the time it will not boot if i shut down and turn it on again later.
 
this is interesting because i've had the problem since like february.
i get it once in awhile. sadly i think i just have to reformat my computer.
you can try reformatting. it might be an OS installation problem.
something could have gone wrong during the installation.
if you really want i could try to reformat mines first and tell you if i still get the problem.
i was just lazy to reformat haha.
 
I've tried reformatting, 80% of the time in windows setup the drive was noot found and i kept rebooting until it was found and reformatted... it did not solve the problem...
This is really getting annoying, i can't shut down my computer without having to spend an hour or more getting to boot into windows. I'm just going to buy an external HDD, backup all my data and buy a new drive.

By the way, are you using a Western Digital "W800AAJS-00L7A0" ? It's an 80GB Caviar Blue drive, 7200RPM.

Also, when it works, it works 110%. it is an awesome drive but it just keeps failing to boot. When it boots there are no read/write errors, I actually tested this by filling the drive with games and stuff, and everything worked... I'm going to scan for errors and bad file sectors now.
 
CHKDSK finished checking, the volume is clean. I suspected as much because everything works when it boots... Maybe it could be a BIOS issue?
 
Solved - It was my BIOS. I updated to the latest one from Acer's website (OEM Mobo) and everythings good now.

NetworkPhantom said:
this is interesting because i've had the problem since like february.
i get it once in awhile. sadly i think i just have to reformat my computer.
you can try reformatting. it might be an OS installation problem.
something could have gone wrong during the installation.
if you really want i could try to reformat mines first and tell you if i still get the problem.
i was just lazy to reformat haha.
Click to expand...

I suggest you update your BIOS too. It isn't that hard, but it's risky if you have programs running. I suggest flashing the BIOS while in safemode.

EDIT: It still fails to boot sometimes. It's become less frequent though.
 
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