A disk read error occurred

[Sasquatch]

That's the message I get when I try booting after just having changed a hard drive. It wasn't the OS boot one, that's on an SSD and I changed back all the BIOs settings to SSD compatible like I have to do every time I fiddle with the hardware.

I was only replacing an old data hard drive with a newer one, the BIOS recognises it . The boot priorities have never shown it as priority 1 but that's never stopped it booting OK in the past. however it also shows boot option 3 as disabled even though it lists all 4 drives including the DVD.

The SSD is still plugged into the same SATA socket on the board and the new drive is plugged into the same one as the old.

Now I get no further than the disk read error message and I don't see what possible error there can be when all that's changed is an HDD which plays no part in the boot process.

Yes I have taken the clock battery out etc. .

[Inspiration101]

Consider checking the SSD manufacturer site for a firmware update for the SSD.

Do the same for the bios version of the main board.

[gpeene]

Look at the back of the old data hdd you will see a set of parallel pins and a small jumper across 2 of the pins or sometimes they are left open they should be marked master slave and something else,, cant remember,, anyway you need to put the jumper across the slave pins and that should sort it .

[Sasquatch]

I don't think it's a BIOS issue and SATA drives don't have jumper switches.

[Guest jacks lad]

Even in Windows 10, the CHKDSK command is run via the Command Prompt, but we’ll need to use administrative privileges to properly access it. To launch a Command Prompt as an Administrator, press the keyboard shortcut Windows Key + X to bring up the power users menu, then let go of those two keys and tap the A key. Alternatively, with the power users menu open you can use your mouse or trackpad to select the Command Prompt (Admin) option.

You’ll be presented with a UAC window requesting permission to launch the Command Prompt as Administrator. Click Yes to proceed and you’ll see a new Command Prompt window. You can verify that you’ve successfully granted the Command Prompt administrative privileges by ensuring that “Administrator: Command Prompt” is present in the window’s title bar.

From the Command Prompt, type the command “chkdsk” followed by a space, then the letter of the drive you wish to examine or repair. In our case, it’s internal drive “C.”

Simply running the CHKDSK command in Windows 10 will only display the disk’s status, and won’t fix any errors present on the volume. To tell CHKDSK to fix the drive, we need to give it parameters. After your drive letter, type the following parameters separated by a space each: “/f /r /x”.

The “/f” parameter tells CHKDSK to fix any errors it finds; “/r” tells it to locate the bad sectors on the drive and recover readable information; “/x” forces the drive to dismount before the process starts. Additional parameters are available for more specialized tasks, and are detailed at Microsoft’s TechNet site.

[GreenPirate]

In your bios you should have a section showing boot order, goto the 1st position and change that to your SSD and your DVD drive to 2nd. As long as these two are in 1st and 2nd position in the boot order it will look for your OS. Add all the other drives after that point (3rd,4th) then let windows sort out any other drives after the OS loads.

If you still have a problem after that it will be the OS/SSD at fault if the BIOS is setup properly and no damage to the motherboard.

[Sasquatch]

I have now got the SSD as first in the boot order but no joy. Will have a surf, it's probably something that should have been bleedin' obvious to me. Thanks to all.

[GreenPirate]

remove the new HDD and any other drive, set the SSD to 1st position in the boot order, save and exit the BIOS and see if it boots to the OS, make sure you save and exit not just exit.

Very rare i've seen a broken(new) drive cause boot failure when it's not the main/OS drive but it is possible or the motherboard is damaged when you swapped over. If the OS boots, without changing anything else, plug the new HDD in and make sure SSD is still in 1st place for boot order. Don't worry about 2nd just see if you can boot with the drive plugged in.

[Sasquatch]

Tried that, same thing.

[GreenPirate]

Only other time i've seen something similar is when AHCI mode was toggled and the OS/BIOS/Hardware did not like it. Running a drive on IDE and another on SATA used to cause a problem with older chipsets. Try changing the AHCI mode to IDE compatible and see if it boots?

What is the motherboard make and model?

If it's not hardware or BIOS, that is when I would take Jacks advice and start looking at the OS/MBR/Boot sector and running a few tools or commands to scan/repair the drive. I'd want to be 100% that it was not the 1st two before I start touching anything to do with the OS.

[Sasquatch]

It might be the AHCI thing, it's supposed to be AHCI for an SSD but it wouldn't surprise me .

New SSDs are supposed to be partitioned in the other system forgot the name but again it didn't like that and had to be done MBR first.

To be continued....

Edited September 25, 2016 by Sasquatch

[GreenPirate]

It is supposed to be set to AHCI for all new installs with SATA, most new motherboards will default to AHCI but depends how old your hardware is?

If it is set to AHCI now, try IDE compatible and see if it finds the OS. If it were a customer PC i'd run a Linux install from USB just to make sure the OS is still on there, then backup, then try and fix the OS. Home PC, depends how much I regarded the files on the OS, if it is important then always backup/recover before doing anything.

[Sasquatch]

It's just dawned on me, this is the same way all my other 10 failures started, I changed some hardware or something and the main drive packed up. Just checked some of the good geek sites and all are full of complaints about 10 doing this and nobody knows why.

This is going to lead to recovery discs, maybe boot stage partition discs but I doubt there's enough space on my 60Gb SSD for another 10 64 bit since there's not much space with the data. Maybe put another 10 on this new HDD and retrieve the data from the SSD from there then put a new 10 on the SSD. Apparently SSDs are OK with the standard Windows quick format option.

However I might not go back to 10 at all. Something to do with hardware and the CMOS seems to make 10 unbootable, it's as if it will only boot on the hardware or at least the drives, present in the computer when it was installed. It can't adjust to changes in the CMOS so can't boot. Something like that? Could be on to something there, even respectable sites like Tom's Hardware were stumped.

This will be 5th or 6th reinstall and maybe I should finally give up and go back to 7 or at least see if a dual boot with 7 on the new HDD and 10 on the SSD will work, which it probably wouldn't . In which case just 7 for peace of mind.

[GreenPirate]

I can't help you too much with Win10 besides the basics, I refuse to upgrade to it. I know I am going to have to play about with it soon, as more and more people/customers/family switch the phone calls will start "I have a problem with my Win10 install.." Surely a windows repair would fix the issue without losing files or touching the OS but again, i've never played with Win10.

The only selling point to it is the multi-threading updates to the OS and DX12, I would go back to Win7 unless you want DX12 features and have the GPU.

[Bird]

I have now got the SSD as first in the boot order but no joy. Will have a surf, it's probably something that should have been bleedin' obvious to me. Thanks to all.

A couple of points that might possibly help sasquatch.

First, if you aren't booting from your SSD so why are you setting it to first in the boot order, or listing it at all? That's asking for trouble imo as it will try and boot from it every time, even if it then goes on to use the other disk (which it doesn't). Try setting it right at a the bottom of the list or even better exclude it from the boot list completely.

Second, when I tried the Windows 10 anniversary update on a system that had recently had an SSD installed it threw the toys out of the pram. Even MS support couldn't get the thing to install & the best they could suggest was to download the offline installer (for the anniversary update) and reinstall from scratch. The error said "cannot install to removable flash drive" which it clearly wasn't, although the installer was on a usb key.

That installed without a hitch, although I suspect that he problem was that my system was upgraded all the way from Xp so my hidden partition was too small. The old one was about 300Mb and the new 500Mb. Interestingly the New 10 install is about 10Gb wheres the upgraded install was about 40Gb (I had deleted the old install) so what all the rest of the crap was I have no idea.

Edited September 26, 2016 by Bird