Weird Computer Issue

Factual Questions
1

I have a fairly recent rig, Win 10, 12GB RAM, NvIdia 1060GTX, etc. But, to keep the expense of this build down, I had to opt for a very small SSD drive…250GB, on which Windows sits.

No problem, I thought…my son got a 4TB Seagate External for his Xbox1 to replace the 1TB Seagate drive, which I absconded with.

I was having issues with it originally, and we deduced a bad cable, which we swapped with the other one on the Xbox. When plugged in, Windows would chime with that “Hey, I understand you just plugged something into me” via USB, but it wasn’t recognizing the drive. All my USB connected devices (my phone, vaping charger, etc) all worked fine in any of the four open USB ports.

So it worked fine for awhile, I was able to now download most of my Steam games onto it so I could play them and not crowd my C drive as it is so small.

Fast forward to today…unbeknowst to me, my ex-wife decided to bring her fax machine over here to send a fax to a new employer, needing to use my landline. Whatever.

But when I got home from work, I was seeing several disc connection errors, so I decided to reboot. The PC would freeze on the Intel screen (1st one)…until I figured out that it seemed the PC was trying to boot from the D (external) drive. My son told me his mom knocked the drive off the top of the PC tower by accident, and now I am back to Windows recognizing a USB device being plugged in via the chime, but not recognizing the drive itself.

We have not tried to plug it back into the Xbox to see if it works there, that’s the next step. But the thing is displaying the very same symptoms it displayed before I swapped the cable, which has never failed on the new HDD on the Xbox.

Any ideas?

2

Confirmed 1TB external drive seems to work (is recognized) by the XboxOneX. Still the same result when plugged back into the PC. Makes audible chime as if recognizing device, then no recognition of device actually occurs.

What’s so strange is that the external drive seems to be interfering with my boot up process also. If I restart my computer, and the external drive is plugged into ANY of the available USB’s, the PC locks up at the Intel screen with an EB (I think) displayed on the bottom right corner of the screen.

As soon as I unplug the external drive, the PC boots right up with no issues. I am confused.

3

Right off the bat, go into your BIOS and tell it not to attempt from that drive (or USB drives, if that’s how it’s listed).
If you ever need to boot from a USB stick, it’s easy enough to change it back.

As for why it wasn’t working, then it was, now it’s not and it appears to be causing boot issues when it’s not…either the drive is flaky, sometimes working sometimes not, when it’s working the BIOS doesn’t see an OS and then looks your your C drive, when it’s not working, it hangs.
Either that or maybe something else in your system is causing it to initialize (even the drive itself) sooner or later in the boot sequence (ie before or after the computer checks USB ports or an OS).

Now, you said it works on the XBox, but maybe try plugging it into the computer after it’s fully booted. If you can navigate the drive, unplug the USB cable and try it again later.
I have a funny feeling, that could be entirely incorrect, that sometimes it’ll work and sometimes it won’t.
ETA, is there anything else plugged into any USB (or any) ports, or rather anything that’s sometimes plugged into any of the ports. I’m just wondering if you have something else plugged in, maybe it’s drawing just enough current that the drive takes a bit longer to spin up.

4

Other than Sensei mouse and black widow keyboard, nothing is plugged in currently to any USB.

It is indeed puzzling. Since both Seagate 1TB and the 4TB externals (and both cables) seem to be full green on the Xbox yet are shaky at best on my PC makes me think of potential motherboard issues. My build includes some used components so I cannot rule it out. But I also don’t know how to check for it either. How in the fuck are all four available USB ports fine for charging, phone connection etc but somehow blind to an external drive…sometimes?

5

Plus the whole boot sequence interference when plugged in…must be a separate but somehow related issue. Can’t imagine how both things would somehow crop up almost simultaneously otherwise.

6

If the drive is has a problem and the computer is looking to it for an OS, it’s probably related.
Check your BIOS and tell it not to check USB drives for an OS (or just put the C drive first in the list). That should let you continue to boot even if there’s problems with the USB drive.

If the external drive happens to have a firewire port (and your computer has one and you happen to have a firewire cable), you could try plugging it in that way. I’m not sure I’d spend money on that yet, but if you have the ability, I’d try it.

Also, get the computer booted, go to the drive manufacturer’s website and they’ll almost certainly have free diagnostic software that you can download and check the drive’s health. That may give you some direction.

7

NETA, get the computer booted normally and go to the drive manufacturer’s website and they’ll almost certainly have free diagnostic software that you can download and use to check the drive. That may give you some direction.

ETA, get the computer booted normally and go to the drive manufacturer’s website and they’ll almost certainly have free diagnostic software that you can download and use to check the drive. That may give you some direction.

8

I second the suggestion to change the BIOS to always boot from C.

It sounds like it may be an intermittent problem. The first cable may not even be bad. Whether the problem is with the computer or with the drive is hard to say.

Does the drive always work properly when hooked to the XBOX? That would probably (but not 100%) indicate that the problem is with the computer.

Another thing to try is to hookup the drive to the XBOX using the supposedly bad cable and see if it seems to work properly.

9

When you say the external drive “works (is recognized)” by the XBox, what exactly do you mean by that? Can you actually read data from the drive using the XBox? If the XBox is just saying that it sees the drive, that seems to be exactly the same thing that’s happening on your PC; it sees the drive but can’t read it. An obvious theory is the drive was damaged when it fell off the tower. The platters and heads are more easily damaged than the electronics, so it would be plausible that the drive is still correctly reporting itself as a USB device but returning errors when an attempt is made to read/write data on the platters. (I’m assuming the external Seagate drive is spinning media, not SSD, although you didn’t actually say that.)

10

A couple more information collecting thoughts:

The “ding” at connection sounds like is is recognizing that something is being attached. When the external drive is connected, have you looked at Computer Management/Device Manager to see if it is being listed under “Disk Drives”, or is it showing up in some other category or with an error message?

Another issue may be that it is having trouble, due to a conflict, in assigning a drive letter. If you run Disk Management, you should see the external drive listed with a drive letter. If needed, you can right click on the external drive’s entry to add or change its drive letter.

11

I had a similar issue with a drive I’d used in my PS2 not being recognized (even as a storage device) in windows. It’s because the console used some weird partition/formatting scheme windows didn’t recognize.
I was able to fix this by initializing the disk in Windows disk manager utility (diskmgmt.msc), which then let me partition and format it. Warning: This will erase ALL DATA on the disk.

If it weren’t for the Xbox recognizing the drive, I’d be inclined to say the drive is physically dead. I had a Seagate drive spontaneously fail on me a while back and discovered it was due to a new, cheaper coating they were using on the disk platters. Turned out the coating can flake off and destroy the delicate drive heads (which can be ruined simply by a bit of dust getting in there).

12

The drive’s connections connections were likely damaged in the fall. Try another cable, and hopefully the USB port on the hard drive wasn’t damaged. The inability of Windows to properly detect a USB device is a very common symptom of a damaged USB connection.

The reason the PC booted normally in the past is likely that the properly-working drive responded quickly to being interrogated by the firmware for a boot loader, and moved on when one wasn’t found. Now the damaged drive responds slowly or not at all and the boot hangs.

It would seem to work on the Xbox One because, by coincidence, the arrangement of cable and hard drive when attached to the Xbox make a sufficient connection, but don’t when plugged into the PC.