new SATA HDD blocks the boot to BIOS

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A

Andrei Ghinescu

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Jul 9, 2014
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System: Asus MB model Asus P8P67M, CPU Intel , existing HDD Seagate 2GB Sata3.

Scenario:
1. I bought WD HDD Sata3 WD5000AAKX and connected it to the system, it was seen and ok
2. I formated the drive to GTP
3. I restarted the system and it was not booting. I might have done something between the steps like connecting it to a different SATA port but i cannot recall (it was late in the night)

Sympthoms:
1. with both drives connected on sata3 it beeps but cannot pass the BIOS screen. Monitor is changing color so it is powered but it gets stuck. If I press Del or F8 it reboots and locks in the same place
2. If I disconnect the WD drive it boots normally to OS
3. If I disconnect the Seagate it is locked to the above state
4. I changed the cables between them, scenario 1-3 is the same
5. Reloaded defaults in BIOS, scenario 1-3 the same
6. Powered the WD in my hand, i feel it working (this assuming I'm not paranoid, which after the last 2 days I'm not sure about)

Can you point me to a solution here?
 
Solution
A
Hi guys and thanks both of you for your suggestions. As I assumed, the bios firmware was an issue for the gtp formated hdd. So i upgraded the bios to a more recent firmware (i'm too reticent to use the latest) and at the next reboot I could see the drive and reformated with default allocation of a sector. That worked like a charm.
That means as a conclusion that BIOS firmware 0702 for ASUS P8P67-M motherboards has an issue with HDD with 512 bytes sector and that caused my issue that was solved by upgrading the firmware.
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mbarnes86

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Sep 16, 2010
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Hi

Assuming Seagate drive has your windows on it
As only one hard disk boot order does not have to determine which is boot hard drive in bios & CMOS setting

After Adding second hard drive bios needs to know which drive to boot from

Usually this depends on sata port numbers lowest number is boot drive
So Seagate should be connected to sata port with lowest number

Regards
Mike Barnes
 
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A

Andrei Ghinescu

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Jul 9, 2014
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Hi mbarnes86,

a. Yes Seagate has Win7 as OS
b Seagate is Sata1, WD Sata2

Extra clues on BIOS Information:
BIOS Version 0702 x64
BIOS Date 02/11/2011

on http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/P8P67M/HelpDesk_Download/ :
Version 0901
P8P67-M 0901 BIOS
1. Fix system hang if the HDD is NTFS format and the allocation unit size is not 4096 bytes.
2. Fix Bitlocker function fail on Drive C.
2011/05/06

and this is by far not the latest update, since the last one is P8P67-M BIOS 3703 from 2013/08/08

Could this be the answer? I formated with allocation unit size 512 if I recall correctly. How do I upgrade the firmware bios and what version should i choose?



 
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mbarnes86

Splendid
Sep 16, 2010
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Hi

Changing bios version is a dangerous game when you are having problems unless you have problem which is fixed by upgrading bios to latest version

But get motherboard model wrong and load wrong bios version could brick the motherboard


If you partitioned the drive with windows 7 then you would get 4k sector alignment
Almost all modern drives use advanced disk format with 4 k sectors

But most 4k advanced format drives emulate 0.5 K sectors anyway
It is partitioning which is critical not the following format to ensure start of partition is on a 4k boundary

Have you looked in Uefi bios to choose which is boot drive ?
Out of Seagate and WD



Regards
Mike Barnes
 
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A

Andrei Ghinescu

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Jul 9, 2014
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yes i did. Seagate is the first. then as an experiment i used a bootable USB, selected it first, seagate 2nd but when WD is connected it goes to the same issue. so regardless of the booting priority order, when WD is connected it gets stuck.
On the other hand, as written above, it might be that the new BIOS firmare is fixing this issue, don't you think?
How can i establish 100% compatibility between MB and BIOS firmware ? Is there any way to be absolutely sure of it?
 
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A

Andrei Ghinescu

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Jul 9, 2014
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and as an answer i partitioned it using windows 7 indeed, but please don't ask why i manually selected 512 sector (i remember i did, but no logic in doing it I'm afraid, i just wanted to use a minimum without understanding the concept - i know i acted stupid)
 
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popatim

popatim

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Dec 2, 2009
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Did you install win7 in uefi mode? Basically you press the f-key corresponding to select boot drive and then select the uefi option that lists your win7 installation media. For example it might say "UEFI: Sony Optiarc AD-7260S-0B" if you had that as your dvd drive.

As for the bios, yes I would update to the latest.
 
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A

Andrei Ghinescu

Reputable
Jul 9, 2014
5
0
4,520
Hi guys and thanks both of you for your suggestions. As I assumed, the bios firmware was an issue for the gtp formated hdd. So i upgraded the bios to a more recent firmware (i'm too reticent to use the latest) and at the next reboot I could see the drive and reformated with default allocation of a sector. That worked like a charm.
That means as a conclusion that BIOS firmware 0702 for ASUS P8P67-M motherboards has an issue with HDD with 512 bytes sector and that caused my issue that was solved by upgrading the firmware.
 
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