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#1
New build started going to windows repair on startup, but reboot works
Interesting dilemma started occurring. Long post, but weird circumstances require details.
Been working on a custom build for a client. Everything is going great up until it's deliver to the customer time (of course). I purchased 160GB WD blues for OS (going to set up in RAID 1), but found out I got some bad drives. Working fine for a couple weeks with no issues, but bad blocks started popping up, so ran them through the WD diags and they failed.
Having not had much luck with WD Blue series, I decide to go with WD Red's for the OS. I put a RAID 5 array and a separate RAID 1 for backup storage in the machine, all using WD Red's and they really work well. Research online said they are good for OS drives, so picked up a couple 1TB's and imaged the existing 160GB partition to one of the 1TB Red drives. I decided not to kick off the mirror on the OS drive until the customer was happy with the setup. Once satisfied, the plan was to perform one final image, then kick off the RAID 1 and handle all future support via remote.
This was last night and this morning I shut the box down, no issues. Fast forward to getting it hooked up onsite and it says it can start, so it goes into Windows repair. I let it run for 2 hours and it gets nowhere, so I put in a Win7 install disc and see if the repair works from DVD. Goes into the same never ending repair cycle, so I just hard reset it and when it gave me option for repair or start normally, I choose the latter. Amazingly, it boots to desktop. Check eventvwr and no errors at all, so I'm hoping it's a fluke. Restart the box from OS and it goes into the same Windows repair loop, but another hard reset and it boots to desktop again. Repeated this a few more times just to replicate the issue and same thing every time. Cold boot or restart from OS and it goes into the repair loop, but a hard reset will put it at the desktop.. every time. So I'm figuring bad drive, which doesn't make much sense with the symptoms, but I figure it can't hurt at this point. so I image it real fast, pop another 1TB Red in from a different batch and pull the image back down. Reset button from the TI Image screen and it boots. Restart from OS, it goes into the same repair loop.
I'm at a loss at this point. I'm hoping it's just the Red drives, but it really doesn't make sense if they are the problem. I'm going back onsite to check it again soon, but figured I'd pass this one to the gurus to see if they'd seen it before. Tons of searching for an answer hasn't yielded any results and I've never seen this before in any of my travels.
Gigabyte Z87X-UD5H with latest BIOS
Windows 7 Professional x64
Western Digital 1TB NAS Red Drives in RAID mode
It literally started presenting right after I dropped the working image onto the new drives, but only after it went through a bit of travel (albeit securely and without any incidents). Will report back after trying some WD Black drives I used for testing some of the images off of it that I know work, but hoping that someone has maybe seen this before in the interim.