Hard drive in a caddy causing boot problems

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  1. Posts : 11
    Windows 10
       #1

    Hard drive in a caddy causing boot problems


    Hi.

    I recently installed a fresh Windows 10 Home on my laptop. I was having some problems and so I made a post on this forum. That post can be seen following this link: Factory reset laptop that has had an upgrade to SSD by cloning old HD
    That has been solved in a weird way. Basically I had to remove my secondary HD which I had in a caddy connecting where my CD drive used to be.

    Now I am having a problem with the secondary hard drive. If I leave it out then I can boot the computer and everything works fine. When I insert the caddy (by shutting down the computer first, of course) and then boot the computer, it gets stuck on a loading screen with the small Windows logo and swirling loading dots on a black background. It stays like that until the computer eventually decides to sleep. Something like 30 minutes.

    In the bios both of the hard drives are registered and I can see them in the boot options.

    I have also tried to connect the hard drive which is in the caddy to the computer using an external enclosure and then it shows one of the partition as being something like 30GB (should be around 300GB) and the other partition shows up but is unreachable.

    I am clueless as to why this is happening.
      My Computer


  2. Posts : 19,516
    W11+W11 Developer Insider + Linux
       #2

    Which disk is set as first boot device in the BIOS ?
      My Computers


  3. Posts : 1,621
    Windows 10 Home
       #3

    CountMike said:
    Which disk is set as first boot device in the BIOS ?
    Also, check through disk management to see if more than one partition is Active, meaning: does each drive have an Active partition? If so, one must be marked nonActive.
      My Computer


  4. Posts : 18,424
    Windows 11 Pro
       #4

    simmisj said:
    I have also tried to connect the hard drive which is in the caddy to the computer using an external enclosure and then it shows one of the partition as being something like 30GB (should be around 300GB) and the other partition shows up but is unreachable.
    Sounds like something has corrupted the second hard drive. Using the external enclosure you might want to try data recovery software if you want to try to save the data on the hard drive. Otherwise you a program like MiniTool Partition Wizard to rebuild the MBR and, if needed, delete the existing partitions and create new ones.

    MiniTool has both data recovery and partitioning software:
    MiniTool Solutions | Best Partition Manager & Data Recovery [Software]
      My Computer


  5. Posts : 164
    Pro x64 Desktop v1607 14393.51, Home x64 Laptop v1607 14393.51
       #5

    Seems like using the Diskpart "clean" option on that HD and then formatting it as a simple NTFS volume might work.
      My Computer


  6. Posts : 11
    Windows 10
    Thread Starter
       #6

    CountMike said:
    Which disk is set as first boot device in the BIOS ?
    The SSD is set as the first boot device. I also tried to override the boot order inside the BIOS using the SSD. Meaning it boots straight from BIOS using the device you selected. To no avail.

    RolandJS said:
    Also, check through disk management to see if more than one partition is Active, meaning: does each drive have an Active partition? If so, one must be marked nonActive.
    Disk management refuses to list the disk.

    NavyLCDR said:
    Sounds like something has corrupted the second hard drive. Using the external enclosure you might want to try data recovery software if you want to try to save the data on the hard drive. Otherwise you a program like MiniTool Partition Wizard to rebuild the MBR and, if needed, delete the existing partitions and create new ones.

    MiniTool has both data recovery and partitioning software:
    MiniTool Solutions | Best Partition Manager & Data Recovery [Software]
    MiniTool actually lists everything correctly. Great! I can see all the partitions and I can browse the file and folder structure but I can not copy anything.

    I forgot to mention that it is not critical that I get the files from this disk but I would like to try.

    So how do I use this MiniTool to grab the files I want before formatting the whole disk? I can not see how it is done.

    In file explorer I can see E but not F. My data that I would like to grab is on F.

    BTW. When I keep this disk plugged in using my external enclosure the computer starts to freeze when file system operations are done. I just tried to copy some files to desktop, then create a folder on the desktop, then create a folder in C:\. Nothing happened. I unplugged the hard drive and BOOM all the operations I issued before completed in an instance.

    Here are some pictures:

    Hard drive in a caddy causing boot problems-devicesanddrives.pngHard drive in a caddy causing boot problems-partitions.png



      My Computer


  7. Posts : 18,424
    Windows 11 Pro
       #7

    simmisj said:
    MiniTool actually lists everything correctly. Great! I can see all the partitions and I can browse the file and folder structure but I can not copy anything.
    I would try MiniTool's recovery program instead of Partition Wizard.
    MiniToll Free Data Recovery Software | Power Data Recovery Free
      My Computer


  8. Posts : 7,871
    Windows 11 Pro 64 bit
       #8

    simmisj said:
    Hi.

    I recently installed a fresh Windows 10 Home on my laptop. I was having some problems and so I made a post on this forum. That post can be seen following this link: Factory reset laptop that has had an upgrade to SSD by cloning old HD
    That has been solved in a weird way. Basically I had to remove my secondary HD which I had in a caddy connecting where my CD drive used to be.

    Now I am having a problem with the secondary hard drive. If I leave it out then I can boot the computer and everything works fine. When I insert the caddy (by shutting down the computer first, of course) and then boot the computer, it gets stuck on a loading screen with the small Windows logo and swirling loading dots on a black background. It stays like that until the computer eventually decides to sleep. Something like 30 minutes.

    In the bios both of the hard drives are registered and I can see them in the boot options.

    I have also tried to connect the hard drive which is in the caddy to the computer using an external enclosure and then it shows one of the partition as being something like 30GB (should be around 300GB) and the other partition shows up but is unreachable.

    I am clueless as to why this is happening.
    I had this problem due to having an active partition on the external drive. I suggest you use MiniTool Partition Wizard to check the partitions on your external drive and change any active partitions on that drive to inactive. You should only have one active partition on your system drive for a single boot PC.
      My Computers


  9. Posts : 11
    Windows 10
    Thread Starter
       #9

    Sorry for the long absence. Had other matters to take care of.

    Anyways, I tried to set the harddrive as inactive but that did not work. EDIT: Well, I managed to set it to inactive, but, It still just hangs when I try to boot up from the SSD.
    I had the hard drive inside the computer when I installed fresh Windows 10 onto the SSD. Might that have done something to the hard drive?
      My Computer


  10. Posts : 19,516
    W11+W11 Developer Insider + Linux
       #10

    simmisj said:
    Sorry for the long absence. Had other matters to take care of.

    Anyways, I tried to set the harddrive as inactive but that did not work. EDIT: Well, I managed to set it to inactive, but, It still just hangs when I try to boot up from the SSD.
    I had the hard drive inside the computer when I installed fresh Windows 10 onto the SSD. Might that have done something to the hard drive?
    Yes, some parts of system might have been installed on that drive too but that should have opposite effect, wouldn't be able to start without it.
    Are we looking at Drive 2 from EAsus picture ? If it is, looks like that that drive has all the partitions to run OS and which should be on drive 1 (BOOT drive).
      My Computers


 

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