Black screen on Vista load

[zcomuto]

I recently upgraded my computer, installing a RAID0 with a pair of 500GB HD's. I decided to buy Vista 64 bit, and got it up and running fine. A problem arose when I was trying to get access to my old hard drive (Vista, 32 bit).

When I plug my old hard drive in, during post I get a message saying "Hard Drive Error - SATA(x)" (x = whatever port it is in). After pressing F1 to continue, Vista appears to boot normally with the usual loading bar. However, it gets stuck on a black screen. I;'ve elft it for about half an hour and nothing happens. It's odd because when the old HD is not plugged in, i get no error during post and everything is fine.

I've tried swapping cables and ports, but to no avail. The problem still exists. My immediat thought was that the HD might just have packed it in, but it is still useable when i disable my raid and boot from it instead.

So, i'm thinking it's come down to my own bios setup - is there an option somewhere to allow for a regular SATA drive to be useable alongside a RAID? (Or, am I being stupid and this is not possible at all?)

My system configuration: (Default, non-overclocked)
CPU: Intel i7 920 @ 2.67GHz
MoBo: Asus P6T Deluxe
RAM: 9GB Corsair Dominator, DDR3 1600MHz
GFX Card: nVidia GTX295
HD's: Hitashi Deskstar 500GB(x2) - for the raid, and a Maxtor 250GB old drive.

 

[Onus]

When the old drive is installed, is Vista actually trying to boot off the RAID, or off the old drive?
Worst case, get an external USB enclosure for the old drive. Keep it around for important backups.

 

[zcomuto]

It's trying to boot off the raid. I've spammed F8 and made sure of it.

It's interesting to note though, that it is identifying my old hard drive witht he RAID tag before it. This somehow causing a problem?

 

[doormatderek]

Sounds like it doesnt know which to boot from... i'd delete the partition to wipe the old drive. Boot disc with just that drive connected or plug it into a different computer and wipe the partition off it there.

 

[zcomuto]

Unfortunatly the old drive has stuff on it which i need, so wiping it is not an option for me just now. I'll try resetting my bios storage settings to defaults and booting the drive alone, see if that helps matters.

 

[zcomuto]

Aha...when I try to boot off of it now, it's asking me to insert a proper boot medium and restart.

Is there any way I can access the drives with some sort of live CD? I already tried Ubuntu, it didn't recognise any drive.

 

[co30cl]

Are all the drives plugged into the same controller, or do you have a seperate RAID controller? If its the same and you set it in the BIOS how to be used (IDE/RAID/AHCI) then I don't think you can use both at the same time.

 

[zcomuto]

ok, i figured out what was wrong.


Aint gonna beleive this...I was using the wrong drive, another, older drive (Which looks identicle, same logo label and all!) that failed on me years ago.

So yea...sorry for waisting your time, but thanks for the help The drive i'm wanting to use works fine.