I write to document the behavior of Windows 2012 R2 in the face of an HDD on the cusp of or having absolutely failed. Because the OS (Windows 2012 R2) was behaving strangely and because certain functions in Hyper-V were failing, I decided to perform
a clean installation of Windows 2012 R2. Disk #0 (1 HDD out of 8 HDDs) was formatted. Rufus was used to create a bootable USB drive. Once the extended conversations with the BIOS were concluded (I had to tell it to boot from the USB drive), Windows Server
2012 R2 began to install the operating system. It stopped responding on the screen that reports that installation is starting. It turned out one of the HDDs was responsible. I worked around the problem by removing 7 of 8 HDDs leaving only the HDD to which
the operating system was being loaded. Once the OS was operational, I reinstalled each HDD individually to see how the software-style RAID and/or mirroring would handle it. One drive in particular would not be recognized. I replaced that one
with a brand new spare. Thanks to great care and perseverance in creatingbackups, I lost no data. One might think the OS installer would recognize that the user hasn't been contacted in a long time and send a note to him or her via the video interface. But, no. We don't even have an animated circle in this case. It's
normal for this particular circle not to be animated.
MARK D ROCKMAN