biofos

Hello all,

I’m biofos (John) and I’m looking for help. I’m sure you people will have answered this before; I’ve looked through the posts and can’t quite find the answer.

Problem: I’ve installed a second SATA HDD and I cannot get my machine to boot up so I can initialise or format the disk.

Machine set up: Asus P4P800 Deluxe Mobo, 80GB Raptor 10,000 HDD on SATA connection 1 is my C drive with XP Pro SP2 on and running. There’s a second 80GB HDD for backup on PRI IDE 1 which is my F drive. This system works fine.
(3.2 P4 Prescott, 1GB RAM.)

New HDD is Maxtor 200GB 7,200 SATA installed and connected to SATA 2 and powered by proper SATA cable. I do not want RAID, just 2 SATA HDD’s and my third storage HDD on IDE.

When I boot the machine with all 3 drives connected it eventually reaches the screen that tells me there’s a HDD problem and Windows cannot start. If I disconnect the new SATA all is OK, boots up to XP fine. If I disconnect the IDE drive and leave the other 2 SATA drives connected it boots to screen telling me there is no boot media selected etc. Supplier recommends I ‘tinker’ with the BIOS – this might be good advice if he included what settings to use.

I’ve tried many combinations of BIOS, to no avail. I notice that with the original configuration BIOS sees my C drive as No 4 IDE and the F drive as IDE 1. In boot device priority it lists the F drive as No1 and the C drive as No3. When I connect the 200GB drive BIOS only sees the F drive. If I have all 3 drives connected it only sees the F drive. When I boot with only C drive connected BIOS sees only the C drive but as IDE No 4. Today I removed the drives leaving only the new 200GB SATA drive on the system thinking that if I could format it via the XP setup the BIOS might recognise it. I F6’ed it at the right place in XP install, put in a floppy with copy of the files of SATA 398? off the mobo setup CD, but when I pressed the selection Promise XP driver I got ‘an unexpected error occurred in line whatever of whatever.’ So I had to abort.

Obviously I’m getting something drastically wrong here. I thought the SATA capability was straightforward especially as I’m not seeking a RAID. This is day five. I’ve read the mobo handbook and have found nothing in there which points to an answer. Can you help me please? Fortunately I can just reconnect the drives to the original configuration and at least my PC will boot properly. But I need extra storage now.

Many thanks

biofos

Oceanborn

Hi, assuming your new HD is not defective, what I can advise you is this...your motherboard has 4 SATA connectors, 2 in the Intel Southbridge (ICH5) and 2 attached to the Promise RAID controller(Lower part of the MOBO), try enabling the Promise Comtroller in the BIOS(if it isn't already) and attach the Maxtor to the SATA RAID 1 on the promise controller and see what happens.
Make sure when you enable the Promise controller in the BIOS that you put it as IDE and not as RAID.
Hope this will help

biofos

Oceanborn,

Thanks for your response, appreciated. I’ve resolved this issue. It was annoyingly simple and had nothing to do with any advice I’d been given by the HDD supplier, my PC manufacturer or anyone else who tried to help.

When I put the new 200GB HDD in my PC I used the mobo supplied twin SATA power cable as this was the only power-in option on the Maxtor. For the sake of neatness I also replaced the old white power plug on the WD 80GB 10,000 rpm drive, which has 2 power-in options, with the other tail of the SATA power lead.

And this was the problem. In desperation, having tried everything else I replaced the power cable to the WD HDD with the original white block 4 pin supply. Bingo. BIOS recognised all attached drives immediately and then it was a matter of configuring BIOS to boot to the proper drive. Is this crazy or what? There is probably some rational explanation, but frankly how anyone can logically work this out is beyond me.

Thanks again for your time and trouble.

Biofos.

rwlister123

I'm probably a little late to reply here, but it does sound like you may have overloaded you power supply.

How are the SATA drive power cables connected to the power supply? If they are all on the same branch, that rail may be power-saging enough to have one of the drives malfunction or shutdown.

If you're still interested in solving the original problem, try moving one of the SATA power connectors to a different wiring branch, or (more expensive) try a higher power rated power supply.

Russ