Removable IDE Caddy & SATA Hard Disk Problem!

[NickF]

Hey all,

Here is my situation. We currently have 80 ACER Veriton 5700GX's here in 4 PC Labs. Each machine has a removable caddy bay for teaching purposes. Nearly every student is issued with a caddy. This is the first year we have been given these PC's last 3 years we were issued with 80 HP Vectra's which worked with caddy no problems.

Here is the current hard disk setup.
Channel 0 Master: IDE Caddy
Channel 0 Slave: DVD-Rom
Channel 1 Master: 80GB SATA HDD
Channel 1 Slave: NONE

Now, the way we wish for this to work, is when a student puts a caddy in the caddy bay we wish for the caddy hard disk to boot over the SATA hard disk. Obviously meaning that the IDE Caddy has a higher boot priority than the SATA. We have our BIOS's locked as we have a wide range of students at all different levels of knowledge. Which of course can be quiet damaging in a teaching environment.

Here is the problem. I can place a caddy in the first time, boots perfectly fine, no dramas. I can also remove the caddy and put 3 or more caddys in with different hard disks. Still not a problem, BUT the problem occurs when i place a caddy in, boot it, turn the machine off and remove the caddy then put another caddy (with the same model hard disk) or the same caddy back in the machine. After doing this you boot the machine up and it puts the SATA HDD as a higher priority than the IDE Caddy. This now means we have to manually change the boot order for the student, and this only works the once. Each time a student puts a caddy back in the machine it continues to place the SATA drive as the first bootable drive.

Has anyone got any idea's or maybe solutions? Or even had similar problems in the past? The only solutions i can think of is the following:

Changing the Serial ATA disk's all to IDE (Not exactly a cheap option).
Getting a Serial ATA Converter for the IDE Caddy's to convert the caddy to a Serial ATA connection (Allthough im not too sure this will fix it).
Replace all the IDE caddy's with Serial ATA Caddys (Again not a cheap option and may not work)
Replace all the IDE Caddy's with USB Caddy's (And of course once again no idea if this will work either)

Most of those solutions still come back to the fact that you need a Boot Order. And it seems that no matter how many times you save the boot order int he BIOS it will continue to reset as soon as the caddy is removed.

Any help on this matter would be greatly apreciated.

Regards.

 

[NickF]

*Bump* Any1 have any ideas on this. Any input would be greatly apreciated this is a really important problem that needs to be solved ASAP.

 

[kda]

I know that the BIOS on different brands differs, but on my ASUS MBs, at least the last two I have owned, there are two places you need to notice in the BOOT submenu of the BIOS.

One (you apparently have found that one) is the BOOT ORDER. This is the one that keeps changing on you.

The other (if your BIOS offers it) is a separate item under the BOOT Submenu that allows you to add / remove (list) drives that show up in the BOOT ORDER list.

If you can remove the SATA drive from the List of Drives you want the BIOS to see as Boot Disks, then it will not appear in the list where you set Boot Order and you problem will be solved ... or at least it solved mine.

 

[samir_nayanajaad]

also try a bios flash

and just wondering why your students need to boot a seperate os? why cant they just have this ide caddy hdd with data on it? because having a copy of xp for all your labs comps and one for all the students I think would be costly (unless they run a free os).

 

[nobly]

Try kda's idea. It sounds like its what you're looking for.

Also if the students just need data, issuing them flash drives might be a whole lot cheaper...

 

[ragkag]

I have an ASUS P4c800-E that exhibited the same behavior as you are describing after I updated the BIOS from 1016 to 1018. My solution was to go back to BIOS 1016. I'm sure you don't have the same mobo but i'm just throwing this out for thought.

 

[NickF]

Being an IT delivery network we require the students to not just store data on the caddy's but to actually install different OS's and learn how to configure/manage them. Some students also work on projects which require different OS configurations (more so things like FreeBSD, Linux etc.) NOT just another copy of windows. The students data is stored on a network share mostly. Removing the SATA drive from being detected will not help as when a student removes the caddy we wish the machine to boot up as normal into its standard XP install (off the SATA drive). Not EVERY student uses caddys. Probably 60-80 of our 200 use caddys for work purposes.

The students can install directly onto the SATA disk but how-ever as i stated some students have projects or tasks's that take more than one lesson to complete. And we really dont have time for them to take a ghost image at the end of each lesson and then re-ghost at the start of each lesson to return the machine to the active state.

We are meeting with ACER Mid april to discuss the problem, but unfortionatly till then i would have liked to found a more permanent solution to the problem.

As for the 2 BIOS options, Let me explain the current setup.

First Boot Device: LAN
Second Boot Device: Floppy
Third Boot Device: CDRom
Boot From Other Devices: Enabled

Then in the boot priority sub-menu we have
Chan1: WD######## (WD SATA Drive)
Chan0: CADDY-HARD-DISK-WHEN-INSERTED
Other Bootable Add-In Devices

^^^^ This menu is what we have to manually change, and as i said the very first time you stick a caddy in it boots it above the Sata. As soon as you remove and re-insert the caddy it gives the SATA priority over it again.

Here is some information i have gathered about the current BIOS im running.

Pheonix Award BIOS 2.3

Mother Board Manafacture: Acer
Mother Board ID/Product Name: F90M
SysBIOS Version: 6.00 PG
SysBIOS ID: R01-C2
BIOS Release Date: Sep 1, 2005

Also in reply to flash drives being a cheaper option. as it stands we have all the equipment needed for the students. we have had for years and used in the older systems for the past 2 years. We have the 80 Hard disks's needed also. At a last resort we will look at using USB Caddy's but i believe we will get the same problems as we have now, as even when you put a USB HDD in it gives the SATA more priority.

 

[kda]

Here is what you said you have.

First Boot Device: LAN
Second Boot Device: Floppy
Third Boot Device: CDRom
Boot From Other Devices: Enabled

Then in the boot priority sub-menu we have
Chan1: WD######## (WD SATA Drive)
Chan0: CADDY-HARD-DISK-WHEN-INSERTED
Other Bootable Add-In Devices

How important is it to boot from Floppy (for example)? Is that something you do a lot or even at all? Can you get your Caddy HD up in the top three .... say as second boot device or even first boot device? Or make it first and then work down your list?

 

[shamoo]

try changing first boot device to something other then lan like hard disk mabey....

 

[NickF]

We do use LAN as primary boot (as we run PXE for ghosting our machines). We also boot to floppy disks and CDRoms very often in nearly all classes as they learn how to create bootable disk's aswell as ghosting manually using DOS and many other combination of things.

I tried chaning the first or second boot device how ever the BIOS only gives the option for "HardDisk" Unfortionatly it does not ask WHICH hard disk we wish to use. So once again it falls back onto the Hard disk boot priority menu as i explained in last post.

We do have a boot menu we can use if we hit F12 which allows us to choose which device we wish to boot from BUT. The stupid thing is this option gets passworded when you lock down and password your BIOS.. I think thats stupid!!! Bloody Acer!!

 

[nobly]

I'm just going to throw this out - don't quote me on it... unless its solves your problem

Here's what sounds like the problem is - once you remove the caddy, the SATA drive takes priority (obviously because there's no IDE).
The problem is when you put the same model of IDE back into the caddy. At this point, it seems the BIOS recognizes it as the model that was taken out. If the BIOS IDE is set manually, then it thinks its the same HDD, so it tacks it into the 2nd position of the boot order (HDD). Or this might be the case if the BIOS isn't set to figure out who's who on startup.
But if its not the same model, it recognizes that it needs to reinitialize the boot order and does so, giving the IDE priority.
I'm guessing that you have the BIOS set to auto-detect since you use different models of HDDs. Is the SATA set to auto-detect too? You might want to try turning off Quick Boot or any faster booting options...

 

[shamoo]

going back to thinking why not change the local hard drive boot.ini to point first record to your caddy and then give it like 20 seconds timesout so people can chose caddy or the local drive.

 

[NickF]

Will that boot a FreeBSD or Linux OS though? I always thought that would boot a windows install yes, But not sure about booting other OS's?

 

[pip_seeker]

We do have a boot menu we can use if we hit F12 which allows us to choose which device we wish to boot from BUT. The stupid thing is this option gets passworded when you lock down and password your BIOS.. I think thats stupid!!! Bloody Acer!!

yeah it really sounds like Acer is to blame here, that was what I was just about to suggest. Back in the old DOS days I wrote a batch file to give you various options on boot up.

I haven't done this in ages so I am not sure if it would work with your conglomeration of OS's that you need to boot from. I would think batch files would work with Windows but not sure since DOS is no longer used. It might be something worth looing into and maybe not.

It sounds like Acer needs to take the password off of this boot menu and seperate it from the BIOS.

 

[michaelahess]

Some systems have a bios boot menu you can get by hitting some key combo F10, etc. If they have that option, just have the students hit that whenever they boot and choose the right drive.

 

[NickF]

We do have a boot menu we can use if we hit F12 which allows us to choose which device we wish to boot from BUT. The stupid thing is this option gets passworded when you lock down and password your BIOS.. I think thats stupid!!! Bloody Acer!!

Thanx for the suggestion Michaelahess but as i stated earlier this menu is passworded with the same password as the BIOS, if we were to give the students the password to this menu. we would also be giving them the password to the BIOS, which as i said we arnt really in a position to do so. As a student may not be able to do much damage. I still do not wish to create more work for myself by letting students play with any/all of the BIOS options. This could potentially disrupt service for some of our students.

pip_seeker, Yes it apears this BIOS has been written specifically for ACER. We will be bringing all these points up with ACER in our meeting next month. It apears there is no other option. DOS menu's do sound like a good idea.

Infact as i write this you triggered another idea in my head, based on a similar idea of writing DOS menus'. Im using the PXELINUX/SYSLINUX software which i have setup a system to ghost via network without using floppy disks. This software allows you to write both Simple Menus and Advanced Menu's. Advanced menu's are developed in something like C/C++. But i do remmember seing a feature where i can specify a Hard disk and a Partition to boot from. ie: hda0 partition1 or hda1 partition4. I may also look into using this to solve our problem as i should be able to do this without any problems.

If any1 has any more suggestions would be greatly apreciated. But it does apear we have crossed nearly every possible solution to this problem.

Nobly: as you put in your statement you are pretty much correct. Except one thing, After the SATA puts it self at the top (the first time) ti doesnt matter which model hard disk you place in after that it wont care. So for the first boot, you can put 3 types of hard disks in no problems. But once you use the same hard disk model twice, it puts the SATA over the IDE and keeps it there!

 

[michaelahess]

It should let you set a user level and system level, the system level will lock out the bios, but the sys level should allow the boot menu. That's how my asus boards work at least.

 

[shamoo]

come to think of it there should be a key like f9 or f11 that allows them to access just a boot menu and chose boot median.

 

[michaelahess]

That's exactly what I'm talking about!

 

[NickF]

Thats what im talking about aswell. And trust me, its passworded. We have set 2 passwords, one for the System BIOS which allows you to enter and modify the settings, also a user level password which allows them to view the bios but not make any changes. The boot menu only accepts the System BIOS password, not the user password. its F12 on these machines, and i can use that option fine with the System BIOS password as stated.

On boot up i hit F12, It asks for a password. if i enter "hello" (user password) it reply's. "Non System Superviser Password, Skipping!" and boots normaly. If i enter the System Superviser BIOS Password it then allows me to choose which median i wish to boot from, ie: CDRom, LAN, Floppy, HDA1, HDA2 etc..

 

[michaelahess]

Man, that's crappy, I'd say you'll have to wait for them to fix that, I can't think of anything else that would work.

 

[NickF]

haha Tell me about it, Only solution i can see is that ACER get the BIOS recoded so that it does not password the bootmenu, Or even accepts the User Level password to enter the bootmenu. Its gay!

 

[michaelahess]

Any Idea what motherboard it uses, maybe you could flash it with a consumer bios?

 

[nobly]

Another idea just to throw out:
Probably not the most practical, but you might try getting a SATA to IDE converter and trying to see if the caddy will be cognized correctly. Hopefully since it'll be onthe same SATA controller as the other drive, it might work.

Then you can send the bill to Acer!
Seriously, they're making you wait a whole month for support??? That really sucks! They should be jumping to meet your demands after you bought 80 of those things.

 

[NickF]

haha sorry nobly i forgot to mention in my first post that i have actually tried this thinking exactly the same thing. But due to the Caddy's design i can not fit a IDE-to-SATA convertor on the pack of the caddy. You see, for the convertor to plug in correctly the IDE connector needs to be flush with the back of the caddy, But in this case the caddy has about 1mm overhang above the IDE connector. So the convertor doesnt actually plug in correctly. Just sorta sits half lop-sided, The bottom row of pins just connected and the top row not touching at all.. Then also the SATA convertor is too wide, Which means it overlaps with the main power input and wont let me plug the main power cable in..

Michaelahess ill found out the motherboard on monday. But i think its an ACER designed/built motherboard, Ill find out what chipset's they are using. But it does seem the BIOS itself was written for ACER, and most of the hardware has been developed by ACER only. Im guessing they got help for componants along the way. Ill find out anyway and re-post.