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Question

PC Stopped booting up with 2nd hard drive installed

Sep 18, 2018 7:40PM PDT

A little back story, recently I go to open up my Laptop, (Toshiba Qosmio) and it would get stuck in a boot loop never actually loading to windows. It would go into the recovery menu after 3 load attempts but nothing would work, every option I tried would come back failed. This laptop has 2 Hard drives, a primary SSD that windows is installed on, and a secondary disc hard drive I use as storage. So I tried replacing my primary hard drive with a back up ssd I have, and still would not load windows. Then I removed the secondary storage drive and as soon as this drive was removed everything loaded back up fine.

I find this really strange that a secondary Hard Drive stopped windows from loading, it just has my storage files on it. The Hard Drive in question is a Seagate FireCuda 2tb, I purchased about a year ago and has been running fine up to this point.

I tried loading the hard drive in my Hard Drive docking station, but I get nothing. Every other hard drive I have will immediately pop up as soon as its powered on this one does nothing. I do hear it powering on and spinning however. Seagate has some diagnostics tools however none of them can find this hard drive, its not showing up anywhere.

Anyone have any special tricks or tips to fixing this? It looks like Seagate does warranty this drive, however I really don't feel comfortable sending them my hard drive knowing all of my personal files are still on there. I wish I could atleast get access to format it...

Discussion is locked

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Answer
seagate drives
Sep 18, 2018 11:58PM PDT
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I will look into this
Sep 19, 2018 3:15PM PDT

Thanks, I will look into the Linux Mint DVD. The pc wont even recognize the drive so i'm wondering if this will. Well let you know if it works.

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Linux did not see the drive
Sep 19, 2018 8:00PM PDT

Unfortunately linux did not see the drive either.

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Time to use that warranty
Sep 20, 2018 3:24AM PDT
Sad
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did you use...
Sep 20, 2018 10:30PM PDT

....a 64 bit version? Possible a 32 bit version might not see the drive.

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Answer
Hdd
Sep 19, 2018 8:46AM PDT

When you put this disk in the docking station does disk management see it?

Then you can also try the linux route to see if that will show anything.

If you try to exercise the warranty I suspect seagate will want the hdd back.

Your call if you want to send it with your data on it.

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No
Sep 19, 2018 3:11PM PDT

No, the disk management does not see the drive. I can hear the drive power up and spin but thats it. I will look into this linux mint dvd.

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Answer
Warranty
Sep 19, 2018 2:22PM PDT

Hey OP, sorry to hear you're running into trouble here. The FireCuda does have a longer warranty than most consumer hard drives, so if you'd like to dig into that, you can check into warranty info by going to our Warranty & Replacements Page.

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Thanks
Sep 19, 2018 3:13PM PDT

Thanks, I did check the warranty, and it says its covered until 2022 which is great, however I don't like the idea of sending a hard drive with almost 2tb of personal info out. I'd like to get my info off of it but at the very least wipe it before sending it out.

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Answer
Problem drive
Sep 20, 2018 10:47AM PDT

You found your 2nd drive has an issue. Since you mounted in another device and still doesn't work, pretty much sums it up. While you have warranty, they're not interested in your data, so don't feel threaten use the warranty. Alas, do what makes you comfortable. But, there's a good chance the data maybe lost as recovery is about getting the drive up and running and not data, unless you pay for that service. Just be sure what you're getting into. You could also have your drive replaced entirely but data if retrievable cloned over.

tada -----Willy Happy