Windows has become damaged after installing a new HDD?
Windows has become damaged after installing a new HDD?
I bought a refurbished 26TB HDD from the Seagate store and installed it into my PC this evening. The system started normally, and I ran a drive check using CrystalDrive. It displayed three boot attempts, two of which were mine, with zero hours of uptime recorded.
Soon after, problems began to appear. Programs would crash, including Chrome, Firefox, Explorer, Windows Search, and more. I also encountered repeated blue screens. By examining the mini dump files, one indicated it was my NVIDIA driver, so I tried updating it. The update failed repeatedly, prompting me to use a DDU and reinstall the driver. However, NVIDIA refused to uninstall in safe mode and didn’t respond during normal boot. After that, I attempted another reinstall, but it kept returning a 7zip: CRC error. I suspected a corrupted TEMP folder might be the cause, so I followed additional troubleshooting steps, though they didn’t resolve the issue.
I also attempted to remove the new drive, but the problems persisted. At this stage, I’m unsure what exactly is causing the malfunction. I’m currently preparing a Windows 10 installation media, hoping that will resolve the issue.
Anyone have any suggestions on where I might have gone wrong?
I was weighing the option of purchasing refurbished 12TB Seagate drives on Amazon at a seemingly low price, but ultimately chose not to buy after reviewing several blogs and examining Backblaze statistics.
https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/com...b_seagate/
The specific model I was thinking about was the ST12000NM007, which had a failure rate of 11.77% (midway through the list).
https://www.backblaze.com/blog/backblaze...r-q3-2024/
It seems Backblaze might have acquired batches of faulty drives, or Seagate could have released a firmware update to fix reliability problems, which made me hesitate about this 12TB unit. I was thinking about deploying eight 12TB drives in a TrueNAS RAID-Z2 setup for approximately 72TB of storage.
It could be useful to check the Backblaze data to verify if these drives are actually reliable. Some Seagate units reported a 14% failure rate on Backblaze. You might have to download multiple small files to locate your drive, but it’s likely present.
https://www.backblaze.com/cloud-storage/...-test-data
Sorry, I can’t be more hopeful, but if the 24TB drive appears in Backblaze data with a failure rate above 5%, I’d prefer to swap it for another brand or model.
It’s unclear whether you’re installing Windows 10 on the 24TB drive; however, an SSD—either a 2.5" SATA with DRAM cache or an M.2 NVMe—would be a much better choice for the operating system. Keep the 24TB drive solely for data storage, not for running the OS.
Additionally, if your 24TB drive is SMR (as opposed to CMR), it’s not ideal as a Windows boot drive due to the increased write operations from shingled layers. In my view, SMR is acceptable only for infrequently accessed archives, but it’s definitely not suitable for intensive tasks like video editing or general Windows use. I no longer purchase SMR drives, opting instead for CMR even if they cost more per TB.
https://techwiser.com/smr-vs-cmr-drives-comparison/
I routinely run Hard Disk Sentinel’s non-destructive surface 'Read test' on any new or used hard disk I buy to assess its condition. This process takes about 10 to 12 hours for an 8TB drive, so you can expect up to 36 hours for a 24TB drive, provided your system remains stable during that time.
https://www.hdsentinel.com/help/en/61_surfacetest.html
Best of luck.
I just completed one night's run of my computer and it passed without any errors. My friend mentioned similar problems he had with reinstalling Windows. I attempted to reinstall using a USB drive, but kept encountering issues. Sometimes the installation media would blue screen, regardless of whether I used another USB drive or a different hard drive. Even after unplugging the Seagate drive, the errors persisted.
When trying to install Windows on the m.2 drive inside my laptop, the process was smooth with no problems. However, when I transferred the drive back to my desktop, the installation became unstable. I could still access my system and perform basic tasks, but many applications would freeze, and installing browsers like Firefox or Chrome was problematic. Edge would frequently crash when loading web pages. Occasionally, I still experienced blue screens, similar to before the reinstall attempts.
I spoke with a friend who reported facing identical issues during Windows reinstallation. He ran a memtest without errors but resolved his problems by replacing his RAM. I plan to visit Microcenter to purchase an affordable module for testing. It seems like everything else has been swapped out, yet nothing is functioning properly.
I plugged the drive into my laptop via a dock, and it seems to be stable there, so I'm starting to think the drive itself is no longer the issue. I still have no idea what might have caused it to glitch out when placing it above the bay though. Honestly, now that I'm thinking about it, my other 1TB drive also seemed to have "failed" after doing the same thing, although that one took much longer to do, certainly longer than the <5 minutes the 26TB drive did. I think I had both the 1TB drive and 4TB drive in my case for a good 10 months before it went (supposedly) bad. It too, still works in my dock without issues.
I will definitely check that list though. As for testing, when I installed the drive, I used CrystalDrive to check the uptime, as a friend suggested. It showed zero uptime and one boot that wasn't mine (3 total boots). I will run that test once I figure out if the ram issue is what's causing my current instability.
Here's a picture of the bay in question. The drive that always stays stable goes in the bay itself. Any drive put on top goes haywire and crashes the PC.
If Windows won't install on the desktop and you encounter error codes 0xC0000005 and 0x8007025D, consider whether it's worth visiting a professional. You've already tried replacing RAM and swapped CPU and GPU without success, and you lack funds for additional hardware tests. It might be more practical to seek assistance from a repair shop.
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Windows 10
After completing those steps, I consistently struggle with section 2, step 8, in most instances. Occasionally, I encounter difficulties in sections 2, steps 1 through 7, based on my luck. If I fail these initial stages, I receive error code 0xC0000005 or am redirected back to step 2 without any error message. When I reach step 8, I face either error code 0xC0000005 or 0x8007025D.
I tried booting Windows after returning from dinner, but it would normally start in Windows, though it becomes unstable after the initial installation on my laptop and moving the drive. Now it automatically enters repair mode, which fails, and I’m prompted to reinstall via media or cloud download—both attempts end with an option to retry or shut down.
I also attempted to reset the CMOS, but that didn’t resolve the issue.
In Step 8, I encounter an error while the process begins. The failure rate differs depending on the percentage.