WD GREEN 1TB drive crashes windows bootup when connected

[austingeorge00]

Hi All,

My Story
I have a Western Digital Green 1TB (WD10EADS-00M2B0) that i took from an external USB HDD I purchased a few years ago (WD Elements). I've since built a PC and wanted to use this drive internally, which I did for a few months.

When I upgraded my PC to have a raid volume as my boot drive, I re-installed windows and then found that my PC wouldn't get to windows boot screen with this particular drive installed.

Today, I was contemplating buying a new drive as I'm low on space, and remembered i have this drive from a few months ago.

Lo-and behold, it still gives the same error, but I've really thrown myself at trying to diagnose why windows will not boot with this drive connected and can't figure it out.

Here's my set-up:
Gigabyte GA-Z68X-UD3H-B3 MoBo
Western Digital Green 1TB WD10EADS-00M2B0 HDD
2x Crucial M4 64Gb SSD in RAID0 (boot volume)
Samsung F3 1TB

Ports on MoBo
WD green connected to GSATA3_6
DVD drive connected to GSATA3_5

SSD's connected to SATA3_1 & SATA3_0

Samsung F3 connected to SATA2_2

More detail of problem
If I hot plug the offending drive whilst windows is on, i get no problems, i can 'rescan disks' on "disk management" and it pops up with ~960Gb of inactive space. I delete the volume, and then create new volume and it works.

When i go to restart with the drive connected, even though I've formatted, and created a new partition, it hangs as it did before.

I have ran the WD data lifeguard application to check for bad sectors, with no errors, and the quick scan has no errors. (i'm currently in the progress of the final config tool which is writing 0's to the whole drive.

Heres a link to screen shots of the status page of the WD tool
LINK

Booting freeze details
I can't boot into safe mode or normal windows when this drive is connected.

Here are screenshots of when i boot into windows as normal with the drive connected
LINK

And here are pictures of when i try to boot into safemode with the drive connected
LINK

Note the graphical glitches at the top of my screen on both safe and normal mode. The 8 bright blue dots in the top left are present whether the drive is connected or not, they appear before a correct bootup. But the other darker blips all over the top edge of the screen aren't normal.

Please please please, if anyone can help me at all, I'd really appreciate it.

Thanks,
Austin

 

[austingeorge00]

The WD diagnostics software has completed all tests on the drive and they've all passed:
- Quick Test
- Extended Test
- Write Zeros

LINK

So it seems its something to do with how my PC is configured.
Can anyone shed any light?

Thanks,
Austin

 

[jnkweaver]

The Western Digital Green drives do not do raid well. the have a power saving feature that puts them on standby causing errors in the raid setup. It will pass the test because the drive is good just not for a raid. You want their red series I think. The Black series works too.

 

[austingeorge00]

The Western Digital Green drives do not do raid well. the have a power saving feature that puts them on standby causing errors in the raid setup. It will pass the test because the drive is good just not for a raid. You want their red series I think. The Black series works too.

Hi,

Does it matter that I'm not trying to RAID the WD Green Drive, and just have it working as a separate storage drive. It is only the SSD's that are in RAID0.

Do you have any links to other users experiencing similar issues with these types of drive?

Thanks,
Austin

 

[jnkweaver]

Sorry I misunderstood.
What happens if you swap the DVD and harddrive SATA connection same?
Does it show up in the BIOS?

 

[jnkweaver]

What version of windows is that?

 

[austingeorge00]

Hi again,

I'll check the BIOS now before and after switching the DVD drive and HDD ports and get back to you.
Sorry, i forgot to mention. I'm using windows 7 64-bit.

Thanks,
Austin

 

[austingeorge00]

Hello, chiming back in.

I changed the controller mode for the GSATA3 controller from IDE to AHCI mode (WD HDD and DVD drive are connected to this) and now windows boots properly and doesn't crash. Also, the WD Green drive mounts at boot which it has never done before.
However, the DVD drive is no longer showing in My Computer. It is however showing in disk management.

Crazily enough, I don't have a CD/DVD to hand to try out on this drive, but I'm sure its not normal for it to be not showing.

Thanks,
Austin

 

[austingeorge00]

Seeing as i can't edit my posts, heres a link to the drive showing in BIOS and the parameter i changed to get it to boot.

LINK

 

[jnkweaver]

Let me understand. You are using Windows 7 64 bit. You are trying to get a SATA WD Green HD to boot. Your SATA port was set for IDE mode. Do you have any IDE devices in the computer? Is your DVD a SATA or IDE (uses the 40 pin ribbon connector and molex for power)

Are you good now?

 

[austingeorge00]

Aaand, now the DVD drive is showing having left my PC alone for a few mins.
I'll post back if anything changes, but so far I think this is solved.

Austin

 

[jnkweaver]

If all your devices are SATA then AHCI is the correct setting for that port with Windows 64 bit.

 

[austingeorge00]

Let me understand. You are using Windows 7 64 bit. You are trying to get a SATA WD Green HD to boot. Your SATA port was set for IDE mode. Do you have any IDE devices in the computer? Is your DVD a SATA or IDE (uses the 40 pin ribbon connector and molex for power)

Yes, Windows 7 64Bit
I'm not trying to boot from the WD drive, i only want to be able to use it as a storage drive, the Intel SSD RAID is my current boot volume.
The DVD drive is a SATA connection.

Austin

 

[austingeorge00]

Best answer selected by austingeorge00.