Can SATA HD be used to boot up

[TByc]

hi all
i just bought a new 1TB SATA HD(for faster speed & performance) knowing that my mobo (asus A7V-VM)doesn't have built in SATA ports.i knew one can install SATA devices using sata controller PCI cards,that's how i did to install my HD.i was able to install Win XP2 on it(F6 option during setup).the problem is i am not able to boot up from this disk,even though i selected in Bios "boot up from add in cards"option as a boot up priority which i think lets u choose booting up from HD hooked up to That SATA controller card.is my thinking that way wrong,will i be able to boot up from this HD.The SATA controller card i bought is SYBA SD-SATA2-4IR.all solutions are appreciated.

 

[sub mesa]

You probably would have been better off with a new Mobo; the PCI card slows down all storage, so it will be slightly slower than from a real chipset SATA controller. I'm assuming that system also doesn't have PCI-express.

Since the controller you bought is a fake RAID controller using Windows-drivers, you need to create a RAID array (you can create a RAID array of just one disk). Then the controllers will show a bootable device, it will be in the boot sequence you can set in the System BIOS, or perhaps you can press F12 to get a Boot Menu; which lists all bootable devices. Running this way also requires RAID-drivers to be used, and may introduce alot of problems. Know before you continue on this road.

 

[TByc]

thanks for the suggestion
i googled around to find how to create RAID array of one disk but in vain,can u tell me how is it possible?

 

[TheDraac]

I believe your boot priority needs to be set to:

Other Boot Device: SCSI/Onboard ATA Boot Device

 

[TByc]

as i already mentioned in my first thread i don't have onboard SATA ports.but i did try to set boot priority to "Bootable add in cards" which i thought my SATA controller card might be but it didn't work.I read in forum before that a card has to be boot able in order to boot from it ,i don't know how to find if the one i bought is bootable or not,it's pretty latest though.

 

[TheDraac]

Well, after all I've been finding, it appears that your board is an Asus OEM board for HP. I've been trying to see exactly what options you have in your BIOS, but being an OEM BIOS I can't really find what I'm looking for. I DLed some BIOS updates supposedly for your A7V-VM, but it looks like HP had 5 versions of that board with different "names". Being the same board however, I believe the differences where mostly with the BIOS's and what CPU's the board originally supported.

Because of that I'm not sure what HP "called" the option and setting you need changed.

With that said, I must say that I'm currently using two different Soyo Athlon XP motherboards myself. I do have one set up with an add in PCI SATA card. I haven't had any problems with that setup when I do use the SATA hard drive to boot from. In my BIOS I have it set to boot from SCSI device.

In my other computer I have an add in ATA interface card "IDE". When it was set up to boot from a drive on that interface, it too was set to boot from SCSI device.

Windows and the BIOS consider hard drives attached to those cards as SCSI drives. You can see this in the Device Manager if you look.

Anyway, any chance you can post a screenshot of your BIOS screen showing the Boot Options???

You should be able to boot from that drive without any trouble....

 

[TByc]

i don't know how to take a screen shot of BIOS showing boot options,i can access that in setup but how to take screen shot of it ????

 

[sub mesa]

Make a picture of it ofcourse, with a digicam.

 

[TByc]

i took the shots but now struck at how to attach them to my reply.

 

[TheDraac]

Open an account at imageshack.us and upload the pictures to them. Then get the needed forum link and post that here. That's what I do anyway.

 

[TByc]

Thanks for the help,hope this might help u solve my problem.

 

[TheDraac]

That still doesn't seem to be what I'm looking for.

I did just read a review on newegg, and the reviewer stated "To boot from a SATA hard drive I had to create a Logical Disk in the card's BIOS so that my PC's BIOS could see it."

I went to Syba's website for the manual and the limited info says you can check the status of the connected drives, under Logical Drive Info.

You need to press Ctrl-S or F4 to enter the cards BIOS menu. Do this when the cards BIOS is being displayed on the screen during boot up. See if it will let you set the Logical Drive Info to On or Active or whatever it is called.

Try that and see what happens. Here's the wonderful Syba user manual...

http://www.syba.com/upload/1242412351/124241235153190.jpg

 

[TByc]

this is what looks like when i hit F4 to enter card utility.first there was no disk showing up in logical drive info.after i started hitting all tabs i hit upon concatenation then only it showed up in logical drive ,but still it wouldn't show detail after hitting"Logical Drive Info" tab to show info.


i tried to boot up from it after disabling my IDE HD,then i got some "NTLDR is missing error,press ctrl+alt+del to restart ur computer."This happened after i tried to bootup from the sil concatenation samsung HD103UJ which showed up in Mobo BIOS in Hard disks.

 

[TheDraac]

If you don't have anything worth saving on your 1TB drive, and I don't think you do since you haven't been able to boot from it since your install. Try reinstalling Windows on it and see if it finally works normally.

I'm actually kind of surprised that it installed the first time around.

If it still doesn't work, some newegg reviewers have mentioned flashing the SATA cards BIOS to one WITHOUT RAID functions.

See here: http://www.siliconimage.com/support/searchresults.aspx?pid=27&cat=15

I guess you need to use the BASE BIOS in the downloaded file.

 

[Pointertovoid]

As you get "NTLDR is missing", provided you have no other disk connected, it proves that the Bios is configured properly and has given the control to the boot sector of the volume, as this boot sector is the one who looks for Ntldr. The Bios doesn't even know what Ntldr is - this is WinNt-specific and the Bios is not.

So this issue is with Win, its drivers, and so on. Concentrate on that.

I know no single Raid controller on Pci that relies on Cpu and drivers to access the Raid. As a proof, the Raid volume is properly accessed by Ms-Dos.

 

[TByc]

yes u r right Pointertovoid, NTLDR is boot up file found in I386 folder in windows setup,now i know why i am getting it cos after i tried installing windows again all i could do is use Setup to load windows file on HD but after it reboots to to finish off the other part of installation it couldn't do that ,instead it stars over again.
when windows identified this HD to load system files on it why it isn't identifying to complete the other half of setup to finish installation.can u people please suggest how to do that ?


i thought installing fresh copy of windows might help get rid of that NTLDR problem but now i can't even install it.


the 1st shot shows the partition i used to to install windows & 2nd one is what i got when windows rebooted to continue installation & this is where i got stuck.

 

[TheDraac]

In your XP install picture... it shows an approx 54 Gig drive D: (partition1) and a 900 Gig drive C: (partition2). Did you make those partitions on purpose??

I would try, at that install screen, DELETE both partitions and create a small 20 Gig partition. Leave the rest unused for now and see if XP will install and run normally. The small size is just to test from so you don't have to wait forever when it formats the drive.

If it works normally, then you can either redo your install and start with the partition size you want or try a partition program and expand the drive to occupy the remaining size of the drive. Not sure if you want one large drive or 2 or more smaller drives.

 

[Pointertovoid]

Could it be a 137GB gag once again? I believe Xpsp2 doesn't have the EnableBigLba set during installation and improving that needs some tweaking and Cd burning.

If - for instance - you try to install Win on the D volume located at the end of the disk (which I'm unsure of based on what Xp's installer tells) then all the boot process needs a BigLba.

And actually, Xp will place the Mft at 1/3 of 900GB or 300GB, which is already further than 137GB, so EnableBigLba is necessary to access the big volume anyway.

A small volume at the beginning of the disk is a good idea. Not just as a trial.

 

[TheDraac]

Hmmm, It seems to me... and it's been quite a while since I've had to deal with those limitation issues, but when the 137GB issue presented itself, it was because of the following.

1. The BIOS would not support larger than 137GB addressing. In that instance, the BIOS would see your drive as only a 137GB drive. So any any OS after that would also only see 137GB.

2. If it were an OS problem, during the install, the OS would see the drive as only 137GB even if the BIOS says it's larger.

The first version of Windows XP and earlier versions of Windows had the 137GB limitation. Win XP service pack 1 and above has the necessary 48-bit Logical Block Addressing (LBA) support.

Since his setup screen shows that one drive is 900GB is size, I don't believe the limitation issue is his problem.

It still seems to me his problem can be worked out, but I'm not sure what the magic bullet is to get him going.

 

[sub mesa]

1. The BIOS would not support larger than 137GB addressing. In that instance, the BIOS would see your drive as only a 137GB drive. So any any OS after that would also only see 137GB.

No, only during PIO transfers, like with the first boot stage, you cannot access anything beyond 128GiB because you need 48-bit LBA BIOS support. But if you create a partition smaller than 128GiB you can boot just fine, and if Windows supports 48-bit LBA (Windows XP SP1 and later) it can access the other partitions and work with them just fine.

 

[TByc]

the reason behind creating partition was to have 52.5GB one for storing OS & other software & other partition 878 GB one to store personal data,my PATA HD is of the same size(formatted) as the 1st partition on SATA HD,that's why i partitioned same size.now i have almost 8GB(valuable ) files on 2nd partition so can't format it. Do i really have to format it just to try if windows installation to go through?

 

[sub mesa]

BTW in the screenshot your C drive is listed as 900GB and your D drive as 50GB. This should be the other way around. Backup your drive, delete both partitions, create a new one of 50GB (quick format) then install to it. Create the other partition in disk management, afterwards. Now you should be able to boot.

 

[hakrox]

I have just managed to boot from a PCI-SATA 4+1e controller-card from Winteck with a SiI 3114 after having similar problems, when I wanted to change a 125GB drive with a new 1TB drive for Windows XP.

I went to the SiliconImage website, downloaded the SiFlashTool and the non-Raid Bios for the SiI3114 and followed the instructions included in the Flash.zip. Flashig the controller BIOS went without problem (device manager, flash BOIS tab).

I lost the RAID possibilities - but I didn't want them anyway. During boot-up the controlles is correctly detected as SCSI. The drive is n o t detected by the mainboard BIOS ( which only detects IDE-disks ).

I cloned my old boot-drive to the new 1 TB-drive a f t e r both drives had been well recognized by the system/explorer, disconnected the odl drive, set the mainboard BIOS to boot from SCSI - and here I am with booting from the new drive. XP works perfectly.

Thank you for this posting and all messages - this brought me to the solution after hours of unsuccessful trials to get it up under the RAID configuartion.

 

[TByc]

i did the same thing as u did Hakrox but instead of controller card showing in MoBo BIOS the HD shows up in Boot priority list in Hard Disks as 00-70 Samsung Hd103 UJ.i also lost RAID feature as i no longer get "press F4 to enter RAID utilities "during card bios.when i tried to set boot up from the HD sansung i got the same screen the 2nd one in my previous answers.
i don't know what went wrong.