Windows has stopped booting. Advice needed please!

Martin, I've never heard of Disk Check wiping a HD. It must have been struggling to piece the data back together on a failing HD. Test your HD now with maker's HD Diagnostic extended CD scan. Kudos on having your data backed up. This is why.

I wasn 't referred to which drive is in DISK0. You need to assure instead that the OS HD is set first to boot in BIOS Boot Priority order. So in BIOS setup now Disk2 must be set the first HD/SSD to boot.

The risk with the other HD's in preceding positions is that a Startup Repair or reinstall can derail the System boot files to a preceding Primary partition. THis can be avoided by unplugging the HD's before a reinstall or repair, or converting all preceding data partitions to Logical using How to set partition as Primary or Logical.

If there is any boot problem with the OS drive after unplugging the problem drive(s) then boot into Win7 DVD or System Repair Disk to run Startup Repair a few times to check for and resolve issues.

Thanks, as ever, for the input!

This isn't the first time you've said to me that it's the first time you've heard of some mishap that I have encountered! Why me, I wonder? I also had, as a remnant of my E partition, a 'found.000' folder, but nothing useful was in it, given I do have a duplicate of the said partition as backup.

I tried plugging in the faulty SSD one more time, just to see if it really is finished, but quite apart from Windows not seeing it when I boot (can't even get BartPE to start from CD-ROM now with the SSD connected!), the experiment caused checkdisk to come up again wanting to check the same partition as before on one of my SATA drives. Very odd. I aborted the check, but since it came up with the same thing every time I rebooted (of course), I deleted the partition, reformatted it and am now copying my folders from backup once more. (Luckily copy speeds are pretty good, around 45MBs/sec, it doesn't take too long to copy the 120GBs or so).

I have ordered a Seagate ST1000DX001 SSHD drive to replace the SSD. As it's not for the O/S (but does have programme executables, like MS Flight Simulator on it), I think that will be a reasonable choice.

No, I know you weren't referring to which drive is in DISK0 in DM - that was my extra info. I check now that the SSD with the O/S is first to boot in the BIOS in the hard drive list. The drive no longer shows up in the SATA list, since I switched it to the Marvell connection on the M/B. It now shows on the separate Marvell splashscreen at boot.. Normal, I guess.

Fingers crossed, no problem with booting at the moment. If I ever need to do a repair, I'll try to remember to unplug all the other drives first. Yes, all my partitions were set up as primary partitions: if I were ever starting from scratch, I'd make sure that that wasn't the case. The link you gave How to set partition as Primary or Logical just leads to a 404 error BTW.. must have been moved. If I can convert primary to logical partitions without erasing data, I might give it a try.

We spent quite some time some months back trying to reset things so that my O/S drive shows as Disk0 in DM, but nothing helped. As soon as I plug in a second drive, it moves position and that new drive becomes Disk0. Will have to live with it (and bear in mind the precautions you mention)..

Thanks again.

gregrocker said:

Martin, I've never heard of Disk Check wiping a HD. It must have been struggling to piece the data back together on a failing HD. Test your HD now with maker's HD Diagnostic extended CD scan. Kudos on having your data backed up. This is why.

I wasn 't referred to which drive is in DISK0. You need to assure instead that the OS HD is set first to boot in BIOS Boot Priority order. So in BIOS setup now Disk2 must be set the first HD/SSD to boot.

The risk with the other HD's in preceding positions is that a Startup Repair or reinstall can derail the System boot files to a preceding Primary partition. THis can be avoided by unplugging the HD's before a reinstall or repair, or converting all preceding data partitions to Logical using How to set partition as Primary or Logical.

If there is any boot problem with the OS drive after unplugging the problem drive(s) then boot into Win7 DVD or System Repair Disk to run Startup Repair a few times to check for and resolve issues.

yeah agree this happens a lot with ssd's since your bcd almost always gets put on your spinner and not he ssd. A hybrid drive will be slower to load levels ect. its not as fast as a true ssd those are more for putting your os on the little partition then your other stuff on the normal part (unless its one of the ones that just use it as cache basically). how old is your dead ssd you can probably get it replaced under warenty. as for the hdd being wiped it defiantly sounds like its dyeing. so do the advice above and also see what its start data says under hdtune for your smart data (if your manufacture program doesn't have that feature).

No, I have checked the disc with two or three utilities (like Hard Disk Sentinel), as I think I noted somewhere, and it shows no problems..

The SSD is about 3 1/2 years old. I'll check, but I doubt the warranty was longer than 3 years.

M

BTW, Hard Disk Sentinel says that my SSD supports TRIM but that it is disabled.

I ran

fsutil behavior query disabledeletenotify

from an elevated command prompt I got

disabledeletenotify = 0

.. so trim IS enabled, no???

martinlest said:

BTW, Hard Disk Sentinel says that my SSD supports TRIM but that it is disabled.

I ran

fsutil behavior query disabledeletenotify

from an elevated command prompt I got

disabledeletenotify = 0

.. so trim IS enabled, no???

should be, sentinel for me looks like this.

Hard Disk Sentinel only reads SMART data. It is not the maker's HD Diagnostic extended CD scan repeatedly recommended which along with Disk Check will tell you the HD condition with certainty.

If an SSD fails and the diagnostics are not readily available on its Support page, then contact Tech Support if within a year of purchase to arrange for testing and possible RMA through them. We see many SSD failures here.

SSD Alignment - Windows 7 Forums
SSD Tweaks and Optimizations in Windows 7
How to Set Partition as Primary or Logical

Formatting logical partitions for data is only to assure that the boot files (System flag) cannot be derailed to a preceding partition when the OS is not in Disk0 position. It should not affect how your mobo numbers the disks.

Read your mobo Manual on it's Support Downloads webpage to see which port is best to plug the SSD, and the hybrid HD into.

No mention of SSD or SSHD or even the word 'solid' in the Asus M/B pdf manual. I'll just have to try it out when I get the drive.