WD external hard drive prohibits PC from booting.

[cosrocket]

I decided to get a WD backup USB hard drive to backup my Dell desktop PC. I connected it to a USB port and when I rebooted the BIOS just hangs and the blue bios progression bar stops half way. When I unplugged the drive and rebooted the PC booted fine. I then tried a couple of other USB ports and the same thing happened, it just hangs on the BIOS screen. I then plugged in a flash drive and that caused no problem, it booted without an issue.

 

Does anyone have any idea what is going on?

[Mindovermaster Global Moderator]

BIOS is trying to boot off that external, and keeps failing to. I think you can disable that single device in the boot section, iirc.

[cosrocket]

Thanks. I won't be at that PC for a few day but I'll check it out. The WD tech support site says that if I reformat the drive to NTFS there shouldn't be an issue booting. Has anyone ever heard of that??

[Mindovermaster Global Moderator]

What is it currently formatted to? Any drive should be NTFS nowadays...

[cosrocket]

Yes, you're right of course. I'll check the BIOS, thanks

[nekrosoft13]

i seen this before, some PCs have USB compatibility issues with certain usb devices.

 

you will need to either update your bios, firmware for the drive (rarely available) or maybe both.

[Blue-Vision]

I've seen this with USB Thumb Drives too ... strange why this happens. I've got one that does it. No good flippin' reason why either. It's not even set as a boot device, nor are my settings ...er, set .. to boot from USB. My machine simply refuses to boot while it's plugged in. My other one, no problem. 

[nekrosoft13]

14 hours ago, Unobscured Vision said:

I've seen this with USB Thumb Drives too ... strange why this happens. I've got one that does it. No good flippin' reason why either. It's not even set as a boot device, nor are my settings ...er, set .. to boot from USB. My machine simply refuses to boot while it's plugged in. My other one, no problem. 

only way to fix it by bios or firmware update to the system or device.

Some devices simply don't like each other.

[inactive]

Maybe I am missing something but if the PC locks up with the external HDD connected at boot, can't you just leave it disconnected and wait til your OS boots up and then connect the drive and proceed to backup your important data?