<TWL> The War Legends

I noticed one of my hard drives was slowing down and maybe making a knocking sound so I started to move critical data to my other hard drive, a process that was on going for a couple days. 2 days ago it appeared to get stuck on shut down so I had to manually shut it off.

next - stuck on windows start screen

I thought I would go to bed and try again in the morning (this has actually worked in the past) but no luck

today I left the boot running and after 12 minutes or so went to a black screen and stayed there for about 2 or 3 more minutes then the log in screen appeared

subsequently I got some errors on several programs including ultramon comicrack and dropbox.... I check my computer and my second drive is not loading (this is the drive that I was moving critical data to)

in retrospect I see the error in my solution to move appdata folders to the hard drive (a month ago or so) to save space on my boot drive.

I believe I will be re-installing windows and hope for the best I can get my second hard drive working.

Im wondering - is it ok to plug - unplug - hard drives while running?

As for unplugging and plugging in a harddrive while running i would say no dont do it.I only unplug and plug them in while the computer is turned off.

This is just a suggestion before you go and reinstall windows and possibly delete important files.
If you can unplug both harddrives and fit a third one (like a new ssd drive) and install windows on to that drive so it will be fresh.Then turn off and fit one of your old harddrives.This will treat it as a data drive and if it reads your data etc you can copy it to a external harddrive.I know it will be a hassle but if youhcave important data which is not backed up it may be a option,and fitting a ssd boot drive is a big plus.
Or remove the harddrives and plug them into a different computer or buy a cheap harddrive dock and fit that to your other computer.When the old harddrive is in the dock it comes up with a drive letter and you can view/copy etc through explorer.

When this happens to me i treat it as a good time to freshen the computer and start fresh but it takes weeks to get the important settings again.

Sorry to hear about the issues Viper.

Yeah, like Paul said... don't plug/unplug hard drives (or any hardware for that matter.... aside from usb stuff) while the pc is on.

Hope you can get the important data backed up.

Ouch......
Starting up today.... No power to mboard
Not sure what happened.

Before you ask, lol have power to machine and switch is on.

Not to familiar with trouble shooting the internal power connections or if there are any fuss.

Will keep you posted if I discover any thing