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My computer starting freezing (showing 100% disk usage for the boot drive) so I tried restarting. Now it won't get past the motherboard flash screen. If I wait there, it eventually goes to a screen with just a blinking underscore. Going into the UEFI Setup Utility, the drive is listed as SATA3__0. I'm not really sure how to continue here.

Hardware
Boot drive: Samsung 840 Pro ssd
I have 3 other storage drives (2 hdd and 1 ssd) connected.
Motherboard is an ASRock Z87 Extreme 4.
Window 10

When booting up with Tails OS on a flash drive, the disks utility shows the 2 ssds, but only one of the HDDs. I'm not sure if that's related.

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Since you've performed the test of booting from USB successfully, you've confirmed the issue is at least one of the drives (HDD or SSD).

What happens if you unplug all but the boot drive? If that works, you've confirmed the issue is with another drive, or with the power supply being unable to handle the load of all four.

Plug them in one at a time to find the culprit. If it is an HDD that is causing the issue, you can try recovering data, if you do not have a recent backup, though the situation is not sanguine, since the drive does not even appear in the disk utility. Best would be to replace it, if you need the additional storage space, perhaps with an external drive with its own power supply, to avoid the load on the internal one.

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  • Unplugging all but the boot drive results in getting the message "Reboot and Select proper boot device or Insert Boot Media in selected boot device and press a key"
    – gabagool
    Commented Mar 11, 2018 at 17:18
  • 2 possibilities: you were actually booting from another drive or the boot drive needs to be repaired.
    – DrMoishe Pippik
    Commented Mar 11, 2018 at 22:16
  • My 2 ssds are different brands and models so I'm sure it's the right one. Oh well that's disappointing. I have a replacement drive on the way and a macrium backup I can use to restore everything.
    – gabagool
    Commented Mar 11, 2018 at 22:32
  • Since you have the disk image, as you say, try restoring it... you may also need to repair the boot sectors separately, which Macrium Reflect can do.
    – DrMoishe Pippik
    Commented Mar 11, 2018 at 22:36
  • I've been trying some other troubleshooting. From a windows recovery disk, I ran bootrec /FixMbr bootrec /FixBoot bootrec /ScanOs bootrec /RebuildBcd Results were FixMbr: The operation completed successfully. FixBoot: Element not found. ScanOs: Identified 1 Windows installation. C drive, that's where it should be. The operation completed successfully. RebuildBcd: Successfully scanned. Identified 1 Windows install. Typed Y add installation to boot list. Returned "Element not found." Rebooted and still got "Reboot and Select proper boot device....."
    – gabagool
    Commented Mar 12, 2018 at 2:59

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