HDD not booting up

[galapogos]

Hi,

I'm running Win7 on my PC 24/7, and I suspect that some of my SATA ports are failing. It takes 1-2s in the AHCI detection menu during the bootup to detect my HDDs when plugged into certain SATA ports.

My boot HDD, a WD Caviar Black 2TB, was plugged into a suspected failing port, and when I came back to it one day, it was stuck in the insert boot disk screen during bootup. I have since been unable to boot up to it.

I've tried plugging it into other SATA ports. Some of them have no delay during detection, however I get brought to Windows Startup Recovery, which automatically attempts to find and fix startup problems. The screen does say that it could take over an hour, and it has been running for over an hour now...and the thing is still running. My HDD LED is almost perpetually lit, with a blip once every few seconds, so I'm guessing it's still accessing my drive.

How long does it take to fix the drive? I suspect the MBR might be corrupted hence it's not booting up, but shouldn't it be pretty quick to fix the MBR if this was the case? Why would Startup Recovery take so long?

Thanks.

 

[usasma]

It's sounds like you may have some hardware problems. Please try these free, bootable diagnostics:
I suggest starting all troubleshooting with the following diagnostic tests. They'll save you a lot of time and heartache if there is a hardware failure, and you'll have the disks on hand in case you need them in the future:

H/W Diagnostics:
Please start by running these bootable hardware diagnostics:
Memory Diagnostics (read the details at the link)
HD Diagnostic (read the details at the link)

Also, please run one of these free, independent online malware scans to ensure that your current protection hasn't been compromised: Malware (read the details at the link)

 

[galapogos]

Thanks. It does seem that way. Anyway, after almost 2 hours of fixing, the system finally rebooted and is up and running now.