Cant boot from primary hdd

[Neuros]

Hey all, yesterday I tried to boot up my pc and it went through the bios splash but then went to a

black screen with a blinking underscore. Pressed the power button and it instantly turned off so I

tried a couple more times, and it did the exact same thing. Next time I tried to go into the bios and

it would not let me it just kept ignoring all commands during the bios splash and going straight to

black screen with the blinking underscore. I messed around on the inside making sure all

connections were ok, RAM, connectors, GPU, trying different ram slots or just one stick at a time

and nothing worked. I figured the hard drive might be gone but I could hear hard drive running

and no scratching or scraping sounds coming from it it indicate it had gone

bad. Im dumb and obviously hadnt backed up the system like a good child would but wasnt too

upset about losing it still just a pain to download all the stuff I had again. So I installed windows 7

to my slave drive and unplugged the primary. Once I had it running I plugged the original primary

hdd back in it didn't pick it up at first but I went under Device manager and scanned for hardware

changes and sure it enough it picked it right up. I could go into it and everything is there all my

stuff looks like the exact same storage space used as before nothing missing that I am aware of

AND it says the disk is healthy so I really have no clue what is wrong at this point.

Ran chkdsk on it and of course it said it found problems and fixed them, tried to boot from primary

with secondary not even plugged in and it did the same thing black screen blinking underscore.

I thought maybe it had a bad sector and thats why it wouldnt load but chkdsk did not seem to fix

it. I dont have much experience with dealing w sectors going bad so not sure it that it was it is or

not or if chkdsk can actually fix it like it says it scanned for and should fix.

Anyone got any idea what this could be and how to fix it with out wiping the drive. If wiping it is the

only option to actually fix it then its fine just would prefer not to if possible.

System specs:

Primary hdd ST 500 Gb

Secondary WD 1 TB

8 Gb RAM

CPU: AMD FX 6200

GPU: Radeon HD 6870

I have had the system for about 5 years I built it back in 2011-2012. Also Ive read a lot about

people plugging in a secondary hdd and it not reading the first but ive had both of these hard

drives plugged in for a long time and have never had that issue.

Thanks for any and all help. Let me know if there is anything else you need! Also primary hard drive was running windows 10 upgraded

free from 7 which is why I have 7 on the secondary drive now.

 

[Boogieman_WD]

Hey there, Neuros.

Where did it say that the drive is healthy, was it Device Manager?

Even if you don't end up reformatting the drive, you should still backup the important data you have on it if you don't want to risk losing it. After that I'd recommend that you download the HDD manufacturer's diagnostic tool and run the tests, to see if anything out of the ordinary pops-up. You could also try the drive with a different SATA port and different cables, although there's little chance that something might be wrong with them, but do it anyway just so that you can rule that out for sure.

Please let me know what are the results of the tests.
Boogieman_WD

 

[Neuros]

Hey there, Neuros.

Where did it say that the drive is healthy, was it Device Manager?

Even if you don't end up reformatting the drive, you should still backup the important data you have on it if you don't want to risk losing it. After that I'd recommend that you download the HDD manufacturer's diagnostic tool and run the tests, to see if anything out of the ordinary pops-up. You could also try the drive with a different SATA port and different cables, although there's little chance that something might be wrong with them, but do it anyway just so that you can rule that out for sure.

Please let me know what are the results of the tests.
Boogieman_WD

Thanks for the reply and the info! Disk management is where I saw the drive was healthy. I was totally unaware hard drive manufacturers had any diagnostic tools. I downloaded the seagate tools and ran the full long test on the drive in question. It failed the test which said for me download the DOS tool they have that can fix most problem sectors that are hard to read. I am downloading it now and hoping to run it soon.

 

[David_on_pc]

Same with me

 

[Neuros]

Whelp, I ran the long test and it came back with some errors and supposedly fixed them saying the drive was fixed and ready. I restarted pc and F9d to choose the right hard drive, but when I chose it it went straight back to the blinking underscore. I think ima run the tool one more time if this doesnt work do you think reformating the hard drive would make it readable again? I've basically pulled all the files I want to keep off of it into an external hard drive I have so the only down side would be re downloading things and reinstalling/updating to windows 10 again

Edit: also in the seatools DOS when I try to run the test it gives a pre failure warning that the hard drive has been subjected to temps over 70 Celsius. To be honest I cant remember if this thing was refurbished or not but I dont really see much possibility of it hitting that in my pc. Hell I have a program to auto shut down if the cpu hits like 60-65 so I highly doubt a HDD would run hotter than the cpu but I could be wrong if anyone knows more about hard drive temps and such.

Edit2: Long test 2 complete found 1 more issue to fix, but it still wont do anything but blinking underscore.

 

[Boogieman_WD]

It really sounds like the drive is in a pretty bad situation so I'd suggest that you try to RMA it. Give it a go either with the vendor you got it from or the HDD manufacturer's customer support, to see if you'd be able to do that. That is, if the drive is under warranty.

@David, the suggestions from may previous post apply to you as well. Give them a try and let me know what happens after that.

Please keep me posted.