BIOS hangs with certain hard drive connected.

[johnnytucats]

My Mojave build has been working fine but suddenly the computer freezes on the BIOS splash screen now when a particular one of the (previously OK) hard drives is connected to any SATA port.

Yesterday, I connected it via USB and it mounted fine. I ran Disk Utility on both partitions and then re-connected it to the SATA port and the computer started normally.

Today it's back to the same issue.

The hard drive is ten years old and it wouldn't surprise me if there's something wrong. What I'm wondering is what it is that makes the BIOS screen hang. Does the motherboard know something about this drive that no other utilities seem to detect?

 

[ctek]

The hard drive is ten years old and it wouldn't surprise me if there's something wrong. What I'm wondering is what it is that makes the BIOS screen hang. Does the motherboard know something about this drive that no other utilities seem to detect?

The hang is occurring in "POST" or "power on self test", which means it's either the time it takes for the drive to spin up and/or the time it takes to perform a very basic hardware check. Also the BIOS is searching your whole drive for a boot sector that it can latch onto.

While I would highly recommend you replace the drive based on its age alone, if the drive contains no important data you could try removing it from the BIOS boot order list.

That way it won't scan the whole drive for a boot sector.

 

[johnnytucats]

The hang is occurring in "POST" or "power on self test", which means it's either the time it takes for the drive to spin up and/or the time it takes to perform a very basic hardware check. Also the BIOS is searching your whole drive for a boot sector that it can latch onto.

While I would highly recommend you replace the drive based on its age alone, if the drive contains no important data you could try removing it from the BIOS boot order list.

That way it won't scan the whole drive for a boot sector.

Your response gels with other info I've culled since posting. I've ordered a replacement.

Thanks!