Boot failure if any second drive is attached

Rmack

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Hi,

I have a Gigabyte K8NS Ultra-939 motherboard with an nvidia nforce3 Ultra
chipset. My boot disks are a pair of mirrored ATA disks.

Today I tried to install a pair of SATA disks to add a striped array. I had
nothing but trouble and eventually worked the system down to the point where
it wouldn't boot if any other hard disk was attached, even an external 1394
disk.

The boot gets into the windows splash screen and then the system just
reboots after a flash of bluescreen.

Is this a problem with the boot sector of my main disk array? What do I do?

Rob Mack
 

bar

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The installation of SATA drives may affect the drive letter assignments.

One should consider how the BIOS, then essentially 'DOS' and then Windows Xp
assigns drive priorities.

You may be able to configure BIOS to provide for the existing drives to be
DISK 0 and then DISK 1. Sometime the installation of a SATA drive would
affect BIOS to assign the STA drives as Disk 0: thus affecting Drive letter
assignments in Xp and this would cause Xp to 'loose track' of where files are
and thus crash or fail to load.

Essentially in a four disk [or two disks with two partitions] DOS would
assign IDE 0 - Master as C Drive IDE 0 - Slave as E Drive IDE 1 - Master as
D Drive IDE 1 - Slave as F Drive.

Now do you see how Xp could get confused if additional drives are added that
cause 'drive letters' to change.

You need to ensure that your BIOS will regard the ATA drives as Disks 0 and
1, then the SATA drives as Disks 2 and 3.

After you sucessfully boot, Windows will need the driver files installed to
use the SATA disks.

You may also have to be very careful with the RAID configuration for the
SATA drives. Are these using an onboard RAID [SATA] Controller or are they
connected via a PCI card?

All of these things affect the boot configuration and hardware envirnoment,
so you need to be careful with the manual configuration settings that are
established in BIOS.




"rmack" wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I have a Gigabyte K8NS Ultra-939 motherboard with an nvidia nforce3 Ultra
> chipset. My boot disks are a pair of mirrored ATA disks.
>
> Today I tried to install a pair of SATA disks to add a striped array. I had
> nothing but trouble and eventually worked the system down to the point where
> it wouldn't boot if any other hard disk was attached, even an external 1394
> disk.
>
> The boot gets into the windows splash screen and then the system just
> reboots after a flash of bluescreen.
>
> Is this a problem with the boot sector of my main disk array? What do I do?
>
> Rob Mack
>
>
>
 

Rmack

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Mar 21, 2005
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I agree that assignments could mess stuff up. It depends on boot order, the
way you've made the partitions, etc. The boot drive will be C:.

Anyway, I get partly through starting Windows so it looks like Windows at
least knows it's on C:. However, if I hook up any of the SATA disks, an
external 1394-attached disk, or another hdd on the secondary slave then
Windows gets partway into the startup and bombs. It just doesn't like other
disks to be present at startup. I can add the 1394 disk after windows is
running-that's fine.

When I started setting up the SATA disks as my second Raid array, Windows
would boot and the disk manager would see them, but I couldn't get the
nvidia raid manager to see them, even though they were members of a striped
array according to the nvidia raid BIOS. So I fiddled with the BIOS setups
and even tried them on the Silicon Images controller (the board has two SATA
controllers). Nothing works, the drives just can't be present. At first they
could be there, now they can't.

Rob Mack

"BAR" <BAR@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:5740B9C0-9E45-440A-90E0-880B3EA71279@microsoft.com...
> The installation of SATA drives may affect the drive letter assignments.
>
> One should consider how the BIOS, then essentially 'DOS' and then Windows
> Xp
> assigns drive priorities.
>
> You may be able to configure BIOS to provide for the existing drives to be
> DISK 0 and then DISK 1. Sometime the installation of a SATA drive would
> affect BIOS to assign the STA drives as Disk 0: thus affecting Drive
> letter
> assignments in Xp and this would cause Xp to 'loose track' of where files
> are
> and thus crash or fail to load.
>
> Essentially in a four disk [or two disks with two partitions] DOS would
> assign IDE 0 - Master as C Drive IDE 0 - Slave as E Drive IDE 1 - Master
> as
> D Drive IDE 1 - Slave as F Drive.
>
> Now do you see how Xp could get confused if additional drives are added
> that
> cause 'drive letters' to change.
>
> You need to ensure that your BIOS will regard the ATA drives as Disks 0
> and
> 1, then the SATA drives as Disks 2 and 3.
>
> After you sucessfully boot, Windows will need the driver files installed
> to
> use the SATA disks.
>
> You may also have to be very careful with the RAID configuration for the
> SATA drives. Are these using an onboard RAID [SATA] Controller or are
> they
> connected via a PCI card?
>
> All of these things affect the boot configuration and hardware
> envirnoment,
> so you need to be careful with the manual configuration settings that are
> established in BIOS.
>
>
>
>
> "rmack" wrote:
>
>> Hi,
>>
>> I have a Gigabyte K8NS Ultra-939 motherboard with an nvidia nforce3 Ultra
>> chipset. My boot disks are a pair of mirrored ATA disks.
>>
>> Today I tried to install a pair of SATA disks to add a striped array. I
>> had
>> nothing but trouble and eventually worked the system down to the point
>> where
>> it wouldn't boot if any other hard disk was attached, even an external
>> 1394
>> disk.
>>
>> The boot gets into the windows splash screen and then the system just
>> reboots after a flash of bluescreen.
>>
>> Is this a problem with the boot sector of my main disk array? What do I
>> do?
>>
>> Rob Mack
>>
>>
>>
 

Rmack

Distinguished
Mar 21, 2005
3
0
18,510
Archived from groups: microsoft.public.windowsxp.help_and_support (More info?)

I should point out that I ran system restore and restore to a checkpoint
from before I started trying to add drives. It didn't help, which just makes
me think more that I've messed up the boot record or something.

Rob Mack

"rmack" <rmack-nospam-350@sbcglobal.net> wrote in message
news:gRu%d.14072$C47.8561@newssvr14.news.prodigy.com...
>I agree that assignments could mess stuff up. It depends on boot order, the
>way you've made the partitions, etc. The boot drive will be C:.
>
> Anyway, I get partly through starting Windows so it looks like Windows at
> least knows it's on C:. However, if I hook up any of the SATA disks, an
> external 1394-attached disk, or another hdd on the secondary slave then
> Windows gets partway into the startup and bombs. It just doesn't like
> other disks to be present at startup. I can add the 1394 disk after
> windows is running-that's fine.
>
> When I started setting up the SATA disks as my second Raid array, Windows
> would boot and the disk manager would see them, but I couldn't get the
> nvidia raid manager to see them, even though they were members of a
> striped array according to the nvidia raid BIOS. So I fiddled with the
> BIOS setups and even tried them on the Silicon Images controller (the
> board has two SATA controllers). Nothing works, the drives just can't be
> present. At first they could be there, now they can't.
>
> Rob Mack
>
> "BAR" <BAR@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
> news:5740B9C0-9E45-440A-90E0-880B3EA71279@microsoft.com...
>> The installation of SATA drives may affect the drive letter assignments.
>>
>> One should consider how the BIOS, then essentially 'DOS' and then Windows
>> Xp
>> assigns drive priorities.
>>
>> You may be able to configure BIOS to provide for the existing drives to
>> be
>> DISK 0 and then DISK 1. Sometime the installation of a SATA drive would
>> affect BIOS to assign the STA drives as Disk 0: thus affecting Drive
>> letter
>> assignments in Xp and this would cause Xp to 'loose track' of where files
>> are
>> and thus crash or fail to load.
>>
>> Essentially in a four disk [or two disks with two partitions] DOS would
>> assign IDE 0 - Master as C Drive IDE 0 - Slave as E Drive IDE 1 - Master
>> as
>> D Drive IDE 1 - Slave as F Drive.
>>
>> Now do you see how Xp could get confused if additional drives are added
>> that
>> cause 'drive letters' to change.
>>
>> You need to ensure that your BIOS will regard the ATA drives as Disks 0
>> and
>> 1, then the SATA drives as Disks 2 and 3.
>>
>> After you sucessfully boot, Windows will need the driver files installed
>> to
>> use the SATA disks.
>>
>> You may also have to be very careful with the RAID configuration for the
>> SATA drives. Are these using an onboard RAID [SATA] Controller or are
>> they
>> connected via a PCI card?
>>
>> All of these things affect the boot configuration and hardware
>> envirnoment,
>> so you need to be careful with the manual configuration settings that are
>> established in BIOS.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> "rmack" wrote:
>>
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> I have a Gigabyte K8NS Ultra-939 motherboard with an nvidia nforce3
>>> Ultra
>>> chipset. My boot disks are a pair of mirrored ATA disks.
>>>
>>> Today I tried to install a pair of SATA disks to add a striped array. I
>>> had
>>> nothing but trouble and eventually worked the system down to the point
>>> where
>>> it wouldn't boot if any other hard disk was attached, even an external
>>> 1394
>>> disk.
>>>
>>> The boot gets into the windows splash screen and then the system just
>>> reboots after a flash of bluescreen.
>>>
>>> Is this a problem with the boot sector of my main disk array? What do I
>>> do?
>>>
>>> Rob Mack
>>>
>>>
>>>
>
>