- Feb 23, 2005
- 11,940
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Please bear with me as I explain this as completely as I can. Here's my system specs, first off:
AMD 3500+ Winchester
MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum SLI
Leadtek 6800GT
Seagate 160GB SATA
Hitachi 160GB SATA
NEC 3520A DVD-R/W
Lite-On CD-R/W
450W PSU w/
I have two hard drives: a Seagate and an Hitachi, both SATA 160gb. I acquired the Seagate when I believed my Hitachi to be dying. The Hitachi would experience write failures which would lock my system up. It would generally reboot fine, but I would still continue to hear it clicking and spinning up intermittently (an event which was also usually accompanied by a very short beep that eminated from inside the case).
So when I installed the Seagate, I installed Windows on it and formatted the Hitachi, not really using the Hitachi for anything, but all the while leaving it connected to my system and accessible as empty storage. Still, it would experience write failures that would lock my system up, so I decided to disconnect it.
Trying to boot after disconnecting the Hitachi created an error message at boot: "NTDLR is missing. Press CTRL + ALT + DEL to restart." Reconnecting the drive did not solve the problem. I eventually found a boot solution on the web that would at least allow me to boot Windows and after booting the system would run fine until eventually I'd get a "Disk Write Failed" error on the Hitachi.
So tonight I decided to disconnect the Hitachi, and totally format the Seagate in order to put a clean Windows installation on my good drive.
This appeared to proceed perfectly normally, until just after Windows had finished formating the disk and installing the setup files. At that point, Windows restarts the system for the very first boot from the hard disk. The system appears to hang terribly at this point. Although it seems to proceed deliberately and eventually succeed at booting windows, it takes FOREVER. I'm talking like 10-15 minutes.
After the first few minutes, a broken white bar will appear near the bottom of the screen, and gradually, very slowly, the broken bar will become solid in progressing from left to right, presumably measuring the boot progress of the OS. This part takes the longest -- about 8-10 minutes at least, maybe longer.
Eventually, it does sucessfully boot Windows though, and at that point the system appears to behave normally.
Can anyone help me decide why the Seagate takes so long to boot Windows? I've formatted the drive twice tonight with the same result both times, so it must be a hardware issue. Could it be something wrong with my SATA controller or something? I ran HD Tach on the drive and it returned something like 130MB/sec so it seems to be allright from that angle.
Can anyone help with some insight into what might be going on?
Thanks,
-Garth
AMD 3500+ Winchester
MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum SLI
Leadtek 6800GT
Seagate 160GB SATA
Hitachi 160GB SATA
NEC 3520A DVD-R/W
Lite-On CD-R/W
450W PSU w/
I have two hard drives: a Seagate and an Hitachi, both SATA 160gb. I acquired the Seagate when I believed my Hitachi to be dying. The Hitachi would experience write failures which would lock my system up. It would generally reboot fine, but I would still continue to hear it clicking and spinning up intermittently (an event which was also usually accompanied by a very short beep that eminated from inside the case).
So when I installed the Seagate, I installed Windows on it and formatted the Hitachi, not really using the Hitachi for anything, but all the while leaving it connected to my system and accessible as empty storage. Still, it would experience write failures that would lock my system up, so I decided to disconnect it.
Trying to boot after disconnecting the Hitachi created an error message at boot: "NTDLR is missing. Press CTRL + ALT + DEL to restart." Reconnecting the drive did not solve the problem. I eventually found a boot solution on the web that would at least allow me to boot Windows and after booting the system would run fine until eventually I'd get a "Disk Write Failed" error on the Hitachi.
So tonight I decided to disconnect the Hitachi, and totally format the Seagate in order to put a clean Windows installation on my good drive.
This appeared to proceed perfectly normally, until just after Windows had finished formating the disk and installing the setup files. At that point, Windows restarts the system for the very first boot from the hard disk. The system appears to hang terribly at this point. Although it seems to proceed deliberately and eventually succeed at booting windows, it takes FOREVER. I'm talking like 10-15 minutes.
After the first few minutes, a broken white bar will appear near the bottom of the screen, and gradually, very slowly, the broken bar will become solid in progressing from left to right, presumably measuring the boot progress of the OS. This part takes the longest -- about 8-10 minutes at least, maybe longer.
Eventually, it does sucessfully boot Windows though, and at that point the system appears to behave normally.
Can anyone help me decide why the Seagate takes so long to boot Windows? I've formatted the drive twice tonight with the same result both times, so it must be a hardware issue. Could it be something wrong with my SATA controller or something? I ran HD Tach on the drive and it returned something like 130MB/sec so it seems to be allright from that angle.
Can anyone help with some insight into what might be going on?
Thanks,
-Garth
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