I've had a Western Digital Caviar SE16 WD7500AAKS since late 2007. Recently (a few weeks ago) when Windows was booting up it wanted to do a disk scan, I let it do its thing and didn't think much of it.
I decided today that I wanted to reinstall Windows (7 Professional). I've done this many times before without a hitch so I left the installer unattended. When I came back in the room there was an error message similar to the following was being displayed under the AHCI boot process:
So I restarted the computer. I could not get in to anything. The hard drive wouldn't boot, the dvd drive wouldn't boot, and I couldn't even get into the bios -- nothing was working. I've tried multiple USB and PS/2 keyboards.
Remembering the disk scan thing from earlier I decided to unplug the hard drive and see what happened. Now the dvd drive boots and I am able to get into the bios.
It seems pretty obvious to me that the hard drive is broken. But why was this stopping me from getting into the bios? I know the AHCI boot process happens before I am able to get in to the bios -- would a failed hard drive really prevent it from moving forward? What does the error message I got even mean?
On another note it looks like I'm going to need a new hard drive. This was the last one I bought (way back in 2007). Does anybody have any recommendations? I just need at least 500GB on SATA, nothing too fancy*. I don't want to go over $100. Hard drives that could be shipped with Amazon Prime are preferred.
Thanks!
*EDIT: Speed (for what I can get from sata 3 Gb/s) doesn't hurt. Nothing slower than 7200 RPM. I myself am not quite sure how the other specs of a hard drive affect speed (one of the reasons I am asking for recommendations).
I decided today that I wanted to reinstall Windows (7 Professional). I've done this many times before without a hitch so I left the installer unattended. When I came back in the room there was an error message similar to the following was being displayed under the AHCI boot process:
So I restarted the computer. I could not get in to anything. The hard drive wouldn't boot, the dvd drive wouldn't boot, and I couldn't even get into the bios -- nothing was working. I've tried multiple USB and PS/2 keyboards.
Remembering the disk scan thing from earlier I decided to unplug the hard drive and see what happened. Now the dvd drive boots and I am able to get into the bios.
It seems pretty obvious to me that the hard drive is broken. But why was this stopping me from getting into the bios? I know the AHCI boot process happens before I am able to get in to the bios -- would a failed hard drive really prevent it from moving forward? What does the error message I got even mean?
On another note it looks like I'm going to need a new hard drive. This was the last one I bought (way back in 2007). Does anybody have any recommendations? I just need at least 500GB on SATA, nothing too fancy*. I don't want to go over $100. Hard drives that could be shipped with Amazon Prime are preferred.
Thanks!
*EDIT: Speed (for what I can get from sata 3 Gb/s) doesn't hurt. Nothing slower than 7200 RPM. I myself am not quite sure how the other specs of a hard drive affect speed (one of the reasons I am asking for recommendations).
Last edited:
no reason to buy 500gb anymore
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