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PC trying to boot from external drive?
klemming
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
I bought a new external drive to backup all my music files. Plug it in, copy files, everything's fine.
Then the next time I tried to turn my PC on, it just stayed on the boot screen.
I unplugged the drive, and everything works normally.
I assume the PC is trying to use the new external drive to boot from, but I don't know why or how to get it to stop doing it. I already have one other external drive that stays plugged in all the time, and it's never caused problems like this.
Any suggestions?
Then the next time I tried to turn my PC on, it just stayed on the boot screen.
I unplugged the drive, and everything works normally.
I assume the PC is trying to use the new external drive to boot from, but I don't know why or how to get it to stop doing it. I already have one other external drive that stays plugged in all the time, and it's never caused problems like this.
Any suggestions?
Nobody remembers the singer. The song remains.
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Just go into BIOS and change the boot order to boot from the local disk before USB, because unfuckering that stuff is not worth the time.
So I looked into it, and the drive has a EFI System Partition on it. Windows won't let me delete it or anything else, so that's handy.
But when I check my BIOS, I'm apparently running a Legacy boot system rather than an UEFI.
Since the local disc is the top of the boot queue (and I can't even get to my BIOS with the drive plugged in, so I can't shift wherever it appears) I'm guessing this is why everything's fucked?
I know just enough about computers to not want to dick around with my BIOS, what are the odds that changing the boot mode from Legacy to UEFI will screw me over? I'm fine with just returning this drive and getting one without a partition, but if my PC stops being usable I am not going to be happy.
You absolutely should be able to get into the bios with the external drive plugged in, just start mashing whatever key gets you into the bios as soon as the computer starts to turn on.
At this point getting a different usb drive sounds like the least stupid option.
This was NTFS, Quick Format. (NTFS because everything else I have seems to use it, quick format because trying it without took about ten minutes before the first pixel of the progress bar was visible, and I only have about six hours to work on this before I have to shut it off)
Would another setting work?
I'm going to try taking it in to work and see if my work computer can delete the partition. That one's way newer, so it should be using UEFI, if that'll make any difference.
Failing that, I'll just return it and try a different one.
Any suggestions for killing immortal partitions?
This is why the simplest solution is just changing the boot order and slamming F9 or whatever your BIOS uses if you ever need to boot from USB.
And when I go in without it plugged in my local drive is right at the top anyway.
Screw it, I'm just gonna return the thing.
Thanks for the suggestions, I'm sure the BIOS thing would have worked if I could have figured it out, but I only know enough about this stuff to know I shouldn't be allowed to go anywhere near the thing.