HDD doesn't boot after installing new SSD

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mythril

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Apr 29, 2015
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Hi, I just installed a fresh copy of Windows 7 onto a new Samsung evo 850 250gb SSD, with my computer previously running an existing hard drive on windows 10. What I did is as follows:


  • Disconnected the hard drive
    Connected the SSD
    Booted off a Windows 7 installation disk
    Installed Windows 7 onto the empty SSD
    Confirmed it had installed properly, booted just fine.
    Reconnected hard drive alongside SSD > (at this point, when I booted the computer again, I was prompted to run chkdsk, which I did, and it ended up going through quite a few things)
    After chkdsk was done, computer booted fine on SSD, and I confirmed that I could both see and access the hard drive as a separate drive in My Computer.

At this point, I didn't have network access on my fresh install, and I needed the network drivers, so I closed my computer and on reboot, selected my HDD as the boot device.

However, I immediately got 'a disk read error occured, press ctrl-alt-delete to restart' on a black screen. I couldn't get past this, so I tried disconnecting the SSD leaving onto the HDD connected, and rebooting, which produced a new error 'bootmgr is missing, press ctrl-alt-delete to restart'.

Upon reconnecting the SSD and rebooting, I can no longer access the hard drive's files via My Computer - the drives appear but do not show a capacity and cannot be accessed.

Disk Management shows a Drive 0 (the SSD) and Drive 1 (the HDD). However, the HDD is now split into 3 partitions (one without a name, only about 40MB, one with around 16GB and one with the remaining 915GB). The file system is now marked as RAW.

See: http://puu.sh/nIwkk/e3b616d075.png

I'm currently running another chkdsk on the largest partition, so I'll update on how that goes. I'm also building a windows 10 boot disk so I can try the repair tool.

If anyone has any idea on what's happening, please let me know.

Thanks!

edit: chkdsk is still running, it's replacing invalid security ids with defaults for a lot of files (up to 65000 now).
 
Solution
Boogieman_WD
There might have been some conflicts between the 2 operating systems and thus the split of the partition, because of the chkdsk, although it sounds really really odd. Other than that it sounds like you were experiencing issues with the drive even before you got the SSD. Freezing, hanging, crashing of your OS might all be caused by a faulty drive or a corrupted partition. Viruses are also a possible culprit, so you should make a full scan of all the drives with an antivirus program with an updated database.

It's really good news that you are able to get to your data. In my opinion you should back it up immediately, just to be on the safe side. After that if I were you, I'd low level format the HDD, then initialize, partition and format...
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Boogieman_WD

Boogieman_WD

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Jul 31, 2014
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Hey there, mythril.

Did you experience any problems with the HDD in the past? Do you have any data which you need to recover from that drive?
I'm having a bit of hard time understanding how you started a chkdsk on the largest partition as it is RAW and you can't run chkdsk on RAW drives. You should get a message like "The type of the filesystem is RAW. CHKDSK is not available for RAW drives."
On the other hand, if the HDD doesn't have any issues at all, perhaps the first time that you ran chkdsk might have corrupted the file system and thus giving the start to all your other problems.
If you don't need to recover data, you could just try to delete the partition you have now and repartition and reformat the drive as you see fit. This way you'll have a fresh secondary storage drive alongside your SSD. You should also download the HDD manufacturer's diagnostic tool to test the drive for errors and bad sectors, just to be on the safe side.

Hope that helps. Please let me know how it goes.
Boogieman_WD
 
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mythril

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Apr 29, 2015
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Hi Boogieman,

I've recently felt that my computer was slowing down - I wasn't sure if this was due to the age of the HDD, or issues with Windows 10, but it would be stuff like searches taking a long time, windows freezing or crashing, etc. I'm afraid I do still have data I need to recover from the HDD.

When I originally posted, the file system as viewed in Disk Management was RAW - however, when I ran chkdsk, at the very beginning when it scanned the drive, it read the file system as NTFS and proceeded normally. Currently in Disk Management, the file system for the partition is now blank.

I did have my suspicions about the first chkdsk that I was prompted to run upon booting with SSD and HDD connected. However, I assumed that it was still fine after that chkdsk because I managed to boot windows on the SSD, and view my hard drive in My Computer. I could see the capacity, and all the files within it. I even managed to pull a file out of my Downloads folder onto the SSD.

It was only after shutting down the computer again, and attempting to boot to the hard drive, that these issues manifested.

I'm also not sure why exactly the drive seems to have separated into multiple partitions. I've tried running CrystalDiskInfo, and it reads both SSD and HDD, and it does not appear to detect anything underperforming. The Health status is marked 'Good'.

At the moment, the chkdsk that I mentioned running is actually still going, overnight it managed to spit out 'replacing invalid security id with default security id for file' for 1500000 files, it's currently in Stage 4/5 verifying file data. Should I keep it running? I'm a little concerned about cancelling a chkdsk midway.

Thanks!

edit: so chkdsk finally finished, the results are here: http://puu.sh/nJuQN/9efc9d08cd.png
It appears that my files are all there, and hopefully it's made some repairs? I'm going to reboot now and see if anything happens.
 
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Boogieman_WD

Boogieman_WD

Judicious
Jul 31, 2014
6,050
2
35,960
There might have been some conflicts between the 2 operating systems and thus the split of the partition, because of the chkdsk, although it sounds really really odd. Other than that it sounds like you were experiencing issues with the drive even before you got the SSD. Freezing, hanging, crashing of your OS might all be caused by a faulty drive or a corrupted partition. Viruses are also a possible culprit, so you should make a full scan of all the drives with an antivirus program with an updated database.

It's really good news that you are able to get to your data. In my opinion you should back it up immediately, just to be on the safe side. After that if I were you, I'd low level format the HDD, then initialize, partition and format it so that I have a fresh secondary storage drive without any traces of previous files system issues or residual OS files. When everything is done, you should test the drive for errors (preferably with its manufacturer's diagnostic tool) and if everything seems fine, just transfer back all the backed up data and you should be good to go.

Here's how to perform a low level format if you decide to go with that option: open CMD (as administrator) and do the following:
1. Type diskpart and press "enter"
2. Type list disk and press "enter"
3. Type select disk X and press "enter", where X is the number of the drive you wish to select. Make sure that you've selected the correct one. You should be able to recognize it by its storage capacity.
4. Type clean and press "enter". When the process is finished, you can just close the Windows.

Note that this process will make the data irretrievable and you should not forget to back it up in advance!

When this is done you should initialize, partition and format the drive:
How to initialize or write a signature to a secondary hard drive or Solid State drive in Windows
How to partition and format a drive on Windows and Mac OSX

Please keep me posted.
 
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