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Recently a friend of mine had problems with his Desktop PC and more general the PC got slower (Windows -7-, so this is not strange to me) and had some problems like stop responding from time to time.

The pc, has attached two internal disks one -possibly- damaged (but still under power) and one SSD with the windows 10 installed on it.

The hdd disk during these problems, was attached and had windows 7 too. When I went there and checked the pc, I found -initially- no problems, but didn't checked the disks with some tool.

I installed as an alternative a Debian 10 XFCE distribution to the hdd and left it on power... but asked my friend to load that OS in case that will have problems with his (used on) windows.

I could not find out if this first problem was caused from some temperature issue on the GPU or a disk issue, or even a CPU temperature issue.

I left the pc to have as default disk the SSD and to boot on Debian only if user will decide it and boot (though bios) from the hdd (that had grub installed witch contains windows entry too).

The next day, my friend told me, that he had issues of non-responding system while he had loaded windows for just some minutes ... Then he tried out debian (selected from bios) and had the same problem ...

Initially, I thought that this means it is possibly a GPU problem because windows was installed on the ssd and could not stuck there because of just an hdd in power but not in use. (and also the problem was the same after just some minutes of usage in both disks and OSs).

The sure thing is that it is a hardware problem.

But could it be the damaged disk under power and not the gpu? Should I just unplug the hdd and leave him to check for some more days? Or I have to be sure it is not a disk problem?

PS: Sorry if the question is not good for here ... feel free to ask me delete or to close it as of topic ... But if you could help me find a way to make an unsafe diagnose (like excluding or not excluding the damaged disk as the reason of the problem) I would appreciate -if this can be on topic-. Some tools too under windows or better under debian/linux that could help me test the hardware could be a nice acceptable answer.

My one sentece question is: Could an hdd under power but not under usage from the OS cause an un-respond-able OS independed of the OS?

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    I suppose it could if the OS is waiting for the drive to respond to a request.
    – Moab
    Commented Sep 30, 2019 at 20:53
  • @Moab ... I mean if a disk that has nothing to do with the OS (windows 7 that it is installed in another disk -the ssd- and -the damaged hdd- has a different file type that the OS doesn't even see) ... could cause windows to be non-respondable
    – koleygr
    Commented Sep 30, 2019 at 20:55
  • Thanks @Moab ... So, if no such request... I guess it could not cause that... Because windows seems to work fine usually (and debian too) ... and windows doesn't ask something about the attached hdd while booting on them... they "see" an un-formatted drive ...
    – koleygr
    Commented Sep 30, 2019 at 20:59
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    In windows explorer will access all drives when you do anything that uses explorer, like browsing files and more. Easy way to find out is to power down and disconnect the drive, boot up and see if the issue stops.
    – Moab
    Commented Sep 30, 2019 at 21:01
  • The issue is something somehow rare ... And I can't stay there (other town) until it happens, I hope just to fix it with a gpu upgrade plus memory upgrade (already have such hardware ti add there instead of the installed)... if windows explorer is running on background this could be a problem ... but if not (that just windows developers knows) then possibly -from what you say- it is not the disk... But thanks ... I will try to reproduce the issue by creating an big ntfs there and browse for some time.
    – koleygr
    Commented Sep 30, 2019 at 21:12

1 Answer 1

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As @Moab mentioned in his comments (or as far as I understood from his comments)... While the harmed disk is in IDLE state (I think this is the term) Windows could make some attempts to access it by using Windows Explorer (in the background or in boot time) and this could cause this problem of unresponsive OS ...

So, the only solution I see is to disconnect the disk and let my friend check for some days/weeks the remaining Windows System before replacing RAM/GPU or whatever....

Thanks @Moab

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