External Drive Causing Boot Problem

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TLD

908 posts

Ultimate Geek
+1 received by user: 263

#160182 27-Dec-2014 12:52

I have a 2Tb External that I bought apparently unused from TradeMe — except it had been unwrapped and the components put back in the box without their individual plastic wrapping. The drive is a Seagate Expansion, and works fine providing I don't power it up until Windows 7 Pro has booted. If I leave it plugged in my system gets most of the way through the boot process before stalling with a corrupted screen that looks a bit like a badly corrupted JPG.

The drive is connected to a PCIe USB3 card, because all of my on board USB3 slots are used. I have another two 4Tb Seagate Expansion drives that have always been problem free, but I did once have to take a new one back to Warehouse Stationary when Windows Disk Management could not see the drive.

Something I did with the problem drive right from new was to add a custom drive icon and autorun.inf file, but I have tried removing the .inf file without fixing the problem. I'm thinking I should be able to do something to prevent the drive causing the boot problem, but would appreciate any ideas on how to achieve that.

TIA

Trevor Dennis
Rapaura (near Blenheim)

TLD

908 posts

Ultimate Geek
+1 received by user: 263

#1204491 27-Dec-2014 14:18

Just realised the drive is formatted with exFAT. All my other drives use NTFS, so I'm going to try reformating.

Trevor Dennis
Rapaura (near Blenheim)

Dairyxox

1595 posts

Uber Geek
+1 received by user: 455

#1204502 27-Dec-2014 14:48

Its more likely to be a mainboard/bios issue, especially since you mention add-in cards.
Tell us some more about your computer...make, model, components (MOTHERBOARD?)...etc.

You could try and update the BIOS.
Are you partial to booting another OS and seeing what happens? Ubuntu Live CD etc.

TLD

908 posts

Ultimate Geek
+1 received by user: 263

#1204510 27-Dec-2014 15:04

Reformating made no difference.

The system:
X79-UD5
3930K running at stock
32Gb RAM
GTX570

Boot drive is a pair of Samsung 256Gb PRO in raid0

Other internal drives:
1Tb SSD used for Projects. I bought this after a raid0 array with a pair of 6th gen V'raptors failed. Two previous raid0 arrays using V'raptors had also failed.
raid0 using two WD 1Tb Blacks
Several single 2Tb WD Blacks

External drives:
Three WD 2Tb My Books
Two Seagate 4Tb Expansion
Plus the problematic 2Tb Seagate

The MB does not have the latest BIOS because the raid arrays failed last time I tried to update it. IME USB3 PCIe card drivers also tend to be flakey. I suspect swapping the problem drive to a MB socket would fix things.

The system is three years old now, but still giving excellent service performance wise, but has had issues. It was built as a NLE editing workstation, and was ranked 4th in the PPBM5 results for the first sixth months after it was built, but was running at 4.4Ghz then. It is still placed 17th three years later, but the lads stopped updating the table a while back.

http://ppbm5.com/DB-PPBM5-2.php

[EDIT] It's interesting that the highest placed Mac in the PPBM5 results table is way down at 661.

Trevor Dennis
Rapaura (near Blenheim)

TLD

908 posts

Ultimate Geek
+1 received by user: 263

#1204516 27-Dec-2014 15:18

OK. I swapped it to an on-board USB3 socket, and the system boots OK with all drives seen. Thanks for your help.

Trevor Dennis
Rapaura (near Blenheim)