[H] Question about boot order stuff with HDs
Hey guys, I ran into an issue I don't really have much experience with on my OLD P4 3.4 Ghz Dell XPS system from Dec 2004: The system came with 2 74GB WD 10k Raptors in RAID0 (which is still a pretty decent perf setup from what I understand). 1 is in SATA0 and the other is in SATA2. A couple years ago I installed a 250GB WD HD in the case, and plugged it into SATA1 (think that's correct) and things worked fine and the system booted fine, etc. So now I just got a 1TB WD HD and swapped out the 250GB one in the case with the 1TB. I had formatted the 1TB in the Thermaltake BlacX while attached to my laptop and it seemed fine, though I think one key issue is that I marked it as Active after the format. Concerned about that, I googled and most posts said it shouldn't be an issue in most systems. Well, as it turns out, it is an issue for me (not sure why tho). When the system boots with the 1TB drive connected (I disconnected it to get the system to boot) it gives me the NTLDR is missing. Press CTRL-ALT-DEL to restart error! Freaked me out for a minute and then I googled (http://tinyempire.com/notes/ntldrismissing.htm ) and saw it had to do with boot order and missing MBR and realized it probably had something to do with that new HD being marked Active (since the 250GB one never was and it was installed in the exact same place). So my question: is there any way to fix this other than taking the 1TB drive out and reformatting it and NOT marking it as Active? If so, would changing what SATA port it's in (i.e. putting the other 74GB WD into SATA1, so it's seen before the 1TB one) make any difference? Is it as simple as changing the boot order on the PC b/c for whatever reason it's checking the drives in the wrong order? Does the RAID affect this in any way, or not really? Just wanted to get some ideas about what to do as I'm a little concerned with mucking around making changes to see what works since I've never really touched my RAID setup since I got the PC over 4 yrs ago and didn't want to mess it up and lose all my data since it's RAID0.and also to understand exactly how it was working in this case (or not working actually) for my edification. Thanks for any help guys! BINO
Re: [H] Question about boot order stuff with HDs
run fdisk and change the status to not active. Some MB's do let you choice boot order in the bios fp At 09:48 AM 4/9/2009, Bino Gopal Poked the stick with: So my question: is there any way to fix this other than taking the 1TB drive out and reformatting it and NOT marking it as Active? If so, would changing what SATA port it's in (i.e. putting the other 74GB WD into SATA1, so it's seen before the 1TB one) make any difference? Is it as simple as changing the boot order on the PC b/c for whatever reason it's checking the drives in the wrong order? Does the RAID affect this in any way, or not really? -- Tallyho ! ]:8) Taglines below ! -- C:\ The stick shift of computing.
Re: [H] Question about boot order stuff with HDs
Ahh, I was just being stupid--for some reason (despite looking at it 3-4 times last night, though this was at 3am and I was pretty tired) I missed seeing that SATA drive was higher on the boot list than the Intel RAID Array! So since the 1TB SATA drive is marked Active for boot and was higher on the boot order, it was looking there first; interesting... So the SATA port it's connected to on the MB has nothing to do with it, right? That makes more sense...ok re-ordering the boot menu now and plugging it back in. I've got the 4th and final SATA port connected to my eSATA adapter (also from Amazon for $15) and using that for the Thermaltake BlacX...so getting full use of all 4 of my SATA ports! BINO P.S. On that note, I've got this Intel RAID Array and I think it's a software RAID; are there any threads I can lookup or does anyone have any comments on whether it'd make a difference to do HW RAID instead? Ignore the fact that it's all old stuff; I'm more just wondering for future system reference...thanks! -Original Message- From: hardware-boun...@hardwaregroup.com [mailto:hardware-boun...@hardwaregroup.com] On Behalf Of FORC5 Sent: Thursday, April 09, 2009 2:20 PM To: hardware@hardwaregroup.com Subject: Re: [H] Question about boot order stuff with HDs run fdisk and change the status to not active. Some MB's do let you choice boot order in the bios fp At 09:48 AM 4/9/2009, Bino Gopal Poked the stick with: So my question: is there any way to fix this other than taking the 1TB drive out and reformatting it and NOT marking it as Active? If so, would changing what SATA port it's in (i.e. putting the other 74GB WD into SATA1, so it's seen before the 1TB one) make any difference? Is it as simple as changing the boot order on the PC b/c for whatever reason it's checking the drives in the wrong order? Does the RAID affect this in any way, or not really? -- Tallyho ! ]:8) Taglines below ! -- C:\ The stick shift of computing.
