Boot Problems :(

[grald]

I have this custom built computer that has been running fine for about a year now till one of my HDs crapped out on me. I used to have two WD Caviars and replaced the crapped out one with a WD Raptor.

So now I have two SATA drives, a WD Raptor 74GB and a WD Caviar 80GB. When I connect these both and try to boot my computer, I don't even get a BIOS screen, when I do these individually, it boots normally and I get a BIOS screen.

When I confirmed that these two drives boot fine individually, I deleted the partion on my Caviar, so there is no conflicting "what drive to boot from" as far as the computer sees the drives.

I don't know what could be wrong, I reset the CMOS memory and even did the load optimized settings thingie.

The Raptor came with this one SATA plug that covers both the SATA data connector and the power connector on the drive, and I have to use a Legacy power connector.

I am just using the Raptor by itself, but I would like to use the Caviar as just storage.

Any help would be great. Thanks

Mobo: Gigabyte K8N-ProSLI

[Pinchy]

Make sure the jumpers are set correctly.

If you havent changed the jumpers, they will both try to be masters, and hence, wont work. You gotta set the slave one to slave

[grald]

Originally Posted by Pinchy

Make sure the jumpers are set correctly.

If you havent changed the jumpers, they will both try to be masters, and hence, wont work. You gotta set the slave one to slave

I thought with SATA, setting master and slave doesn't matter (i.e., don't really need to do anything)? Or is this always not the case?

[Pinchy]

Come to think of it, ive never actually used two SATA drives at once..

Ive only ever used a SATA and IDE drive together, or two IDE drives, so thats a good point you bought up (my answer is, im not too sure )

Its odd that the computer doesnt POST at all.

Are the SATA plugs plugged into SATA 1 and SATA 2? (They probably are, just confirming). Would it be possible to test the drives in another motherboard?

[Taz100420]

on my mobo bios it says sata1 is the master and sata3 is the slave while sata0 and sata2 are master and slave

[grald]

Well.. Now I get a BIOS boot.. but it doesn't get past/go to the loading screen of Windows XP with the progress bar thingie.. I only see a faded resemblence of it on my screen, but the bar doesn't move. Any ideas? Thanks for the replies so far.

[Pinchy]

Just out of interest, what got you the BIOS screen?

And in the BIOS, is everything set correctly, like is the raptor master, caviar slave, etc etc? And is the master set to boot up windows first in the boot priority list?

[grald]

Originally Posted by Pinchy

Just out of interest, what got you the BIOS screen?

And in the BIOS, is everything set correctly, like is the raptor master, caviar slave, etc etc? And is the master set to boot up windows first in the boot priority list?

To tell you the truth I don't even know.. I thought I didn't format the caviar correctly and at bootup the computer was confused on what HD to boot from since the caviar used to have XP installed on it, so I formatted using the Repair option when booting WinXP CD (I was able to do this by unplugging the raptor and connecting the caviar by itself.

That got me to the hangup on the Windows loading screen.

BIOS should be set up correctly, I disabled raid (since the K8N-ProSli boards have RAID enabled by default.

Thing is on bootup, when I have the two HDs connected, I don't even see the caviar being detected (but the caviar does work), just the Raptor... so I don't know why it would hang on the Windows loading screen.

From what I stated before and my search online, SATAs don't need to be set to master/slave (something to do with the SATA ports being independent or something along those lines, I could be wrong about explaination.)

I'll play around by plugging the HDs to different SATA ports.. we'll see the ports are actually designated master / slave.. I'll dig up the mobo manual. I'll update if I get farther than where I am.

[Pinchy]

Yeah, sorry about the jumper things...I was way off (too used to IDE configurations)

I had a similar problem when I was trying to use a SATA and IDE drive at once, messing around in BIOS made it work

In your BIOS, do you have an option to 'configure SATA ports as IDE'? (or something along those lines)

[rizzo]

It's not showing up in "boot priority" or whatever that setting is called? Once you get it to detect both drives you will have to move the disc with windows to the top spot.

[grald]

Originally Posted by rizzo

It's not showing up in "boot priority" or whatever that setting is called? Once you get it to detect both drives you will have to move the disc with windows to the top spot.

Yeah that caviar isn't showing up on the during the boot process, nor under the "boot priority". I don't know whats wrong.. if I just plug the caviar in by itself.. it detects fine. If I plug in the raptor.. I can't see the caviar.

Originally Posted by Pinchy

Yeah, sorry about the jumper things...I was way off (too used to IDE configurations)

I had a similar problem when I was trying to use a SATA and IDE drive at once, messing around in BIOS made it work

In your BIOS, do you have an option to 'configure SATA ports as IDE'? (or something along those lines)

Something like that.. I have to option to disable RAID so that it reads the hard drives regularly instead of thinking that I want to set up the two drives in RAID.

[Pinchy]

enable the configure SATA drives as IDE, and make the raptor the primary master, and the caviar the primary slave...see if that works

[grald]

Originally Posted by Pinchy

enable the configure SATA drives as IDE, and make the raptor the primary master, and the caviar the primary slave...see if that works

Thanks for all the help Pinchy.. Whichever bios settings I try.. it won't pick up the caviar when the raptor is connected, but it picks it up fine by itself. So your option is a no go.

I thought I got it when I realized that I formatted the caviar too and it was labeld C: as well as my caviar ( something along the lines of trying to boot two drives labeled C: or conflicting MBRs) I deleted the partition through the recovery console so that it was just unpartitioned space using diskpart and still a no go.

I don't know what other commands I can use so that caviar so nothing is on it (i.e. boot record, etc..) since I used to use it as an OS drive. Maybe that is what is screwing it up.

Anyone know the commands (perferable under Recovery Console provided by the XP CD) or some kind of boot disk I can download that will completely make a hard drive, that was once used as an OS drive, as a secondary (storage) drive?

[Pinchy]

No problems mate. I remember the hours of frustration i had when i was trying to connect me IDE and SATA drives...

Anyways, dont quote me on this, but i dont think it matters what the hard drives are named or what the hard drives actually have on them, until you boot up into windows. As you said, the problem is that the computer is not actually recognising the disk (even if they were both called C, the BIOS should still recognise that the HDD is there)


Im stumped into why its not working though. Maybe its a power issue?...maybe the power plug to the second HDD isnt working?

[grald]

Originally Posted by Pinchy

No problems mate. I remember the hours of frustration i had when i was trying to connect me IDE and SATA drives...

Anyways, dont quote me on this, but i dont think it matters what the hard drives are named or what the hard drives actually have on them, until you boot up into windows. As you said, the problem is that the computer is not actually recognising the disk (even if they were both called C, the BIOS should still recognise that the HDD is there)


Im stumped into why its not working though. Maybe its a power issue?...maybe the power plug to the second HDD isnt working?

I finally got the computer to boot.. but it was slower than usual.. The caviar still doesn't pick up.. I just uninstalled the Nvidia IDE driver that was installed with the nForce4 AMD drivers. Still doesn't show up on boot or under the admin thingie under control panel for formatting drives etc..

I am going to try to download the raid drivers, even though I'm not setting them to raid and see what happens with the F6 thing. Hopefully it will pick up if my floppy drive stops acting up.. I am so annoyed with this damn thing already.

[Pinchy]

At least windows is booting

[grald]

Originally Posted by Pinchy

At least windows is booting

I got it working finally!!! Thanks for your help.. I dl'ed the RAID drivers for my MOBO.. and booted the XP cd.. used F6, it seemed like it didn't work, when I restarted it, it recognized my drive..

Only reason why I didn't F6 sooner, was when I first built this computer with the two caviars, I never used the RAID drivers at all.. Sigh.. to go through all that frustration for that long.. THanks again.

[Pinchy]

The best part...when the problem is fixed

Good luck, hope it continues to work for ya!