PC booting issues with internal secondary hard drive installed...

[siratfus]

Zotac i7 media pc
Running Windows 7

I have no clue what's going on, or even how to articulate this, but I'll give it a shot, and maybe someone has experience this and knows exactly what I'm talking about. My zotac has a MSATA slot, so I recently cloned my SSD hard drive to my MSATA. The source SSD hard drive is now out of the picture, I'm going to use it to upgrade my macbook that is running a slow 5400 hard drive.

Okay, so I installed the msata, and I also installed a secondary 500gb 7200 rpm hard drive. This hard drive used to have windows on it, but I had formatted it. The PC wouldn't boot, kept hanging in the initial splash screen. I went into set-up and I changed the boot sequence to make sure my new msata takes priority. It still did not work. I uninstalled the secondary hard drive, and the PC boots fine. So what I did was attach the secondary hard drive via usb and I went into disk management and I deleted the partition and made the whole drive unallocated. I turned everything off and re-install the secondary hard drive. The PC now boots fine. I go into disk management again and changed the unallocated hard drive to whole new simple volume. It is now a secondary drive. I restarted the PC several times to see if everything is good, and it was. So I'm thinking the issue is solved...

But something weird happened. I needed to re-organize my workstation and started unplugging everything. When I re-plugged everything, I had the same issue again, it would hang at the splash screen. So I did the whole song and dance again like I described above. The issue is once again solved. But the method I'm using to solve this issue involves deleting and making the hard drive unallocated. So as you can imagine, I'm hesitant to add data to this secondary drive. If I have the issue again, I'm going to lose it.

So my question is.. Does unplugging usbs, power cords, etc. really have an affect? Or was that just a coincidence? Will this issue return because of some unresolved issue? I'm going to submit this thread now, but I'm going to go and unplug everything again to see if I can re-produce the issue.

[Krispy Kritter]

More likely the 500GB drive is faulty. Test the drive using the manufacturers drive tools. You can get them from the HDD manufacturers website. There is usually a quick or short test and a long test. Run both. If either test has errors or fails, the drive is faulty and should be replaced. If it passes, there is likely another hardware issue. Likely the power supply or motherboard.

[DB83]

May be wild of the mark but it is worth a thought.

Windows.ini shows the assigned drive for the OS irrespective of the bios. Is it possible that has been changed when you cloned the SSD - I assume you tested the new drive before you took out the SSD so the 'OS Drive' had to be changed for that test ?

Another thought. Windows installation stores certain hardware to prevent multiple installations from one source. Your new HDD will have a different ID from that of the SSD.

Maybe you can run a 'repair' from the install disk.

[siratfus]

Just as I thought unplugging stuff had nothing to do with it. I cannot reproduce the same effect. It seems to have stopped doing it. But will take your guys' advice, thank you.

[siratfus]

My pc is no longer hanging at the boot screen. But I'm noticing crash dump blue screens twice in a span of a week now, when I never saw it before. Really wanted to skip all the fresh install process and updates. But man, I think I'm going to have to just do a fresh install. This is just like the horror movies where the clone looks real, but it's just a little off. LOL!

[Bjs]

The drive is a critical device in the os install process

Cloning ide to sata or reverse generally gives no problems

But when dealing with sd's and msata drives the only sure fire way to success is to do a clean install.

[siratfus]

Since I was going to do a fresh install of Windows 7 anyway, I figure what's the harm in giving the free Windows 10 update a shot. I've signed up and been qued for awhile now, the upgrade is ready for me anytime, so today I hit it. Wow!!! Black screens, constant freezing, and when I right click to personalize or choose any of the items on the menu such as screen resolution, graphics display, etc. All it would do is tell me "the trial period for this app is over, please go to Microsoft store..." What the heck is going on? I thought it was free?

Anyway, did a fresh install of windows 7, and all is good. But I'm curious, any of you guys know what's up with Windows 10? Did my issues have anything to do with the manufacture of my pc? Mine is a Zotac, so was I suppose to check with them first to see if it's compatible with windows 10 or something? Because man, nothing worked.

[DB83]

More likely to do with the 'failed' installation via the cloned partition.

The other possibility is that your copy of Win7 is not full retail. I thought the free upgrade only covered that. If your Win7 is OEM or specific for that PC then the free upgrade will not apply.

I could be wrong on both counts.

[siratfus]

More likely to do with the 'failed' installation via the cloned partition.

The other possibility is that your copy of Win7 is not full retail. I thought the free upgrade only covered that. If your Win7 is OEM or specific for that PC then the free upgrade will not apply.

I could be wrong on both counts.

Mine is original retail I believe, it's home premium and I have original dvd. And wouldn't they know? This is their notification in my taskbar telling me I'm eligible.

[siratfus]

Anyway... bad news.. I saw the BSOD last night. Not all windows update had been installed when I saw that. But still, I never saw it when I freshly installed the Samsung evo and during my time using that. So now with the mx200 msata, I've seen it as a clone and as a fresh install. Some I'm thinking that's the culprit. I'm going to update to the latest firmware from crucial to see if that helps.

[siratfus]

Still having issues.. This has absolutely got to do with the fact that I'm mixing msata with normal 7200 sata as secondary drive. The original Samsung evo ssd that I've installed in my macbook pro, well now I've seen the blue screen there too, and I also have a second regular 7200 drive installed in the macbook pro.

To sum up and draw a clearer picture in case you don't want to read from the beginning:

-I have two computers.. The Zotac i7 originally used a 500gb 7200 sata drive, and my macbook pro 2011 which used a 320 7200 sata drive. (NO BSOD ISSUES)
-I purchased a samsung evo 500gb for my zotac i7 and removed the 500gb drive. (NO BSOD ISSUES)
-I realize my zotac has an msata slot, so I purchased a 250gb crucial mx200. I removed the samsung evo to install in the macbook.
-I now have spare 500gb and 320gb sata drives, so the 500gb went to the Zotac's secondary bay, and the 320gb went into the macbook. I had to remove the macbook super drive and install a secondary caddy. (NOW THE BSOD ISSUES ARE BORN, MAINLY ON THE ZOTAC)
-I decided to flip the secondary hard drives to see if that makes a difference, so the 320 gb from the macbook is now the secondary hard drive for the Zotac. The Zotac's 500gb is now secondary for the macbook. (I STILL SEE BSOD FOR ZOTAC, and I EVEN SAW IT FOR THE MAC TODAY.)

So now I'm simply removing the secondary drives to see how each of these computers will function without the secondary drives. I suspect they will function fine like before. So by tomorrow, I should be able to pin-point that the secondary drives are causing some sort of conflict. Some suggested they may be faulty, but they served as main hard drives with OS on them before SSDs and Msatas came into my life, and I never saw the blue screen. If you guys have any advice, I'd appreciate it. Thanks.

[siratfus]

Now that I think about it, there was probably nothing wrong with the clone. It was the secondary hard drive all this time.

[siratfus]

Been getting blue screens without the secondary hard drives. LOL! So, it is the msata crucial mx200 after all. Been advised by pc maker to update my bios. Does anyone know how to create bootable usb flash drive containing dos image?

[Krispy Kritter]

Depending on the motherboard, the USB drive may not need to be bootable. The last time I updated that way (the last few times were simply from within Windows), I simply booted in the BIOS, selected update, and inserted the USB drive with the new BIOS image. I didn't have to boot from the USB drive.

[siratfus]

Didn't want to keep on updating this thread with wrong troubleshooting conclusions. But it's been 3 days now clear of any BSOD. I've even been using my pc with secondary hard drives. The mx200 was indeed the culprit. It gets good reviews, but it just wasn't compatible with Zotac products currently. Since it operated fine with the Samsung Evo ssd before, I installed the msata version of the evo and it's been smooth sailing even with secondary hard drives installed.