BIOS/SATA Issues

[Arlt101]

~Specs~

Motherboard: D975XBX
CPU: Q6600
Graphix Card: GTX8800
RAM: (1)2Gb Corsair
Hard Drives:
1) Primary/Boot- IDE
2) SATA, Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 ST3250318AS
BIOS: Intel with "BX97510J.86A" update
RAID Drivers: "RAID: Intel® Rapid Storage Technology Driver for Intel
Desktop Boards" Version 9.6.0.1014
O/S: Vista 32

Windows recognizes the hard drive and i can use it. I cloned my primary IDE to the new Seagate without a problem using Seagate's "DiscWiz ". Now i was going to make the new hard drive primary but this is where i ran into issues.

First, BIOS wont recognize it in the advanced settings under SATA PORT. Second in Vista, when you "activate" it and assign the drive a letter it doesnt show it could be boot able.

I've checked all my cables, reinstalled all my BIOS and drivers, i even tried re-cloning it and nothing. My brother broke my origal Vista CD, so reinstalling it that way is not an option for me.

Does anyone know how to fix the BIOS problem, it should help correct the boot-ability of the Seagate.

 

[chunkymonster]

First, if windows recognizes the Seagate drive then the BIOS has to know it exists in order to present the hardware to the OS.

In the BIOS, is the cloned Seagate listed as the primary boot device? If the IDE drive is listed in the BIOS as the primary boot drive, then the BIOS does not know that the Seagate is the first hard drive that the OS should be booted from.

Unless there are other problems, like issues when cloning the drive, then it should be nothing more than setting the proper boot order in the BIOS.

Most likely Vista is assigning it a letter other than "C" because of the drive boot order.

You "reinstalled your BIOS"? Huh?

 

[Paperdoc]

When you cloned to the new Seagate SATA unit, by default Disk Wizard would have set the Partition it created on that unit to a Bootable Partition, and that ought to work. However, you do have the option to change that when Disk Wizard is used. Did you? If you did, maybe the clone copy is not bootable. BUT I doubt that is the issue.

Chunkymonster is pointing to something useful to try. Disconnect the old IDE HDD so only the new Seagate is in the machine, then ensure within BIOS Setup that it is the boot device. Well, maybe it is the second boot device after the optical drive. See if that works. If it does, the problem is simply that Windows was confused about which device it boots from and calls the C: drive.

There is another thing that could cause this. Windows needs to use different drivers for IDE devices and SATA (AHCI) devices. It comes with both. If you install Vista to a SATA HDD, it will add in those SATA drivers and it works. However, in your case it appears that your Vista originally was installed to an IDE drive, so just MAYBE it failed to install the AHCI driver because it did not find any such device to use. But now you try to boot from an AHCI device that contains a clone of the OS without that driver, and it cannot use that HDD. You can try to TEST this hypothesis easily. As I said, disconnect the IDE old drive and have only the new SATA drive in. Go into BIOS Setup to where the SATA drive is configured. Find the place where you specify the SATA Port Mode. Do not set it to AHCI - set it instead to IDE (or PATA) Emulation mode. This will have the BIOS fool Windows into thinking it is only dealing with an IDE device (same as it was before the change). Save and Exit. If this allows you to boot and run from the clone copy of Vista on the Seagate, we've confirmed the missing driver hypothesis.

OK, so if that worked, what can we do to fix this? Well, one way is just to continue running that way. BUT if you want to take advantage of a few extra features of AHCI devices, you will need to add in the missing driver. I think you can do this with a Repair Install. To do that you need a Vista Install CD. Now I now yours is gone, but I believe any other one you might borrow from a friend is sufficient to do this.

What you do is set up as if you were going to do a new Install of Vista - Install CD in the optical drive, no old IDE drive, new SATA drive installed and configured as an AHCI device in the SATA Port Mode place. Set the BIOS to boot from the optical unit first, then the SATA unit. Boot up BUT do NOT proceed with a normal Install. Look very closely and find the option for a Repair Install, and run that. What it does is survey the hardware devices found in the machine and the software drivers already installed in the OS on the boot HDD. Then it fixes any mismatches. This should identify the problem that an AHCI device is present but there is no driver for it, and install that for you. Once that is completed, shut down and remove the Install CD, then reboot and see if the problem is fixed.

When everything is working this way, reconnect the old IDE drive and verify in BIOS Setup that it is NOT part of the potential boot sequence. Save and Exit, and it should boot and show you that old IDE unit as a second HDD with a new letter name like E: or some such, ready to use with all its files intact. But your C: drive you just booted from should be the new larger Seagate unit.

Oh, an important "By the way". Usually by default when you clone from an older smaller HDD to a new larger one, Disk Wizard will make the Partition it creates on the larger drive the same size as the older drive. I always think that is the wrong way to do it. But just check: what is the size of the "drive" on the Seagate unit that contains the clone you made. Is it the same size as the old IDE drive? Post the answer here. If it is that way, you have a few choices about how to get access to the extra space. Let us know what you find and we can advise based on that info.