Deltona Couple

OK guys, I finally got ahold of a great deal. I recently got a Western Digital 500 GB SATA drive. I set it up as bootable, and let the software do the rest. It made a PERFECT copy of the original drive on my computer, and I was all ready to have some fun....then the trouble started. I don't know HOW and I dont know WHY, but when I removed the old ATA hard drive and rebooted my system, It won't try to boot from the new drive. Bios recognizes it, and if I boot from the OLD drive, I can acess it and read files, everything works as far as data communication, but the darn thing absolutely REFUSES to boot. I looked in the BIOS, and my SATA on-board is there, recognizes the drive, but for whatever reason, when looking under the "advanced" section, and the dropdown for "boot sequence", It doesnt list the new drive at all. It's almost like the MB won't allow booting from the SATA drives. Anyone heard of this? The MB is an MSI. I can't remember off the top of my head what the exact model number is, but It was brans new about a year ago. The SATA drive is a 300mb access rate, and the mainboard supports 300mb. I am lost....any help would be GREATLY appreciated!

__________________
"It is not that I have failed, but that I have found 10,000 ways that it DOESN'T work!" --Thomas Edison

Dilbert1234567

how did you make a 'perfect' copy of the original drive? did you use a program to do it, or did you drag and drop?

__________________
Donate Blood!

"Love is not finding the perfect person, but learning to see an imperfect person perfectly." -Sam Keen

Dragonlich

Does it simply refuse to boot, or does it produce errors? Depending on the motherboard, the SATA connection might be from a RAID chip. If that's the case, you might need special drivers. You might wanne try installing a fresh copy of Windows on the SATA drive, see if that works.

Dilbert1234567

Dragonlich makes an excellent point, if this is the case, what you can do is use a program called sysprep just before you image the first hard drive, and force it to redetect the mass storage device.

__________________
Donate Blood!

"Love is not finding the perfect person, but learning to see an imperfect person perfectly." -Sam Keen

cyrnel

Did you modify boot.ini to reflect the new bus?

Did you modify the BIOS boot order to include SCSI or wherever in your chipset the SATA interface is "attached"?

__________________
There are a vast number of people who are uninformed and heavily propagandized, but fundamentally decent. The propaganda that inundates them is effective when unchallenged, but much of it goes only skin deep. If they can be brought to raise questions and apply their decent instincts and basic intelligence, many people quickly escape the confines of the doctrinal system and are willing to do something to help others who are really suffering and oppressed." -Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media, p. 195

zed wolf

Hmmm.. I seem to show up late alot.
I totally agree with cyrnel, make sure the .ini file shows the new path and in your bios check that you are setup to boot from SCSI device.

__________________
____________________________________________________

Wait a minute...you google searched uncircumsized wang?
And we're the best that you could find?~~~~~~~~~ Bill O'Rights
____________________________________________________

Deltona Couple

OK, sorry it's been a bit, I'll try to answer them all....

Dilbert: I used the software that came with the harddrive, it makes a perfect "image" of the original drive, and also sets up the partitions, formats, and sets the drive as bootable.

Dragon: The bios doesn't even list the drive under the selection for "bootable devices" It shows the floppy, and the CD drive, as well as the original ATA drive, but no SATA drive selection is even showing up as an OPTION in the BIOS.

Cyrnel: I don't see the use in editing the boot.ini file if the BIOS doesnt even TRY to look at the SATA drive for booting.

Zed: the drive isn't a SCSI, it is an SATA and I have verified the BIOS has the latest flash update.


So far still no change. The BIOS absolutely refuses to let me select the SATA drive, even though it RECOGNIZES it as a device attatched to the MB.

__________________
"It is not that I have failed, but that I have found 10,000 ways that it DOESN'T work!" --Thomas Edison

zed wolf

Mmmk. try making scsi your first boot device anyway. for some reason sata drives are classified as scsi by the bios on my system.
I'm running a 160gig WD sata drive as my primary drive, with os and a 120gig IDE as a storage drive. The system booted fine with the default bios settings and only the sata drive until I plugged in the the ide drive then it tried to boot from that instead until I set the first boot device to scsi. On start up the post would indicate both drives and the respective capacities but would always try to boot from the ide drive.
I am not sure if bios's have been altered to change this but I don't believe they have.

__________________
____________________________________________________

Wait a minute...you google searched uncircumsized wang?
And we're the best that you could find?~~~~~~~~~ Bill O'Rights
____________________________________________________

Deltona Couple

Good idea, however my Bios does not have an option for SCSI under bootable devices. I am beginning to think I am going to need to buy a new MB....

__________________
"It is not that I have failed, but that I have found 10,000 ways that it DOESN'T work!" --Thomas Edison

cyrnel

Does it have "boot/try other devices?" Disable everything else. Removable or "other devices" should see it. If not, have you gone into the SATA firmware to enable the drive? After the normal POST you should see the SATA firmware diagnostics, and a "press X to configure" message.

SCSI is the common hook for many SATA (and other custom device) implementations because much of the logic is already there. Phases, disconnects, etc. SATA is something of a dumbed down serial SCSI anyway. Not SAS, but the important stuff maps well.

Oh, and what is the motherboard and its BIOS version?

__________________
There are a vast number of people who are uninformed and heavily propagandized, but fundamentally decent. The propaganda that inundates them is effective when unchallenged, but much of it goes only skin deep. If they can be brought to raise questions and apply their decent instincts and basic intelligence, many people quickly escape the confines of the doctrinal system and are willing to do something to help others who are really suffering and oppressed." -Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media, p. 195

MikeSty

I second this.

Deltona Couple

It has that option to "boot from other device" but under that selection, it doesn't have the SATA listed as an option. I think I am just gonna say screw it, this gives me an excuse to talk the wife into allowing me to upgrade the MB, and hmmm.... OF COURSE I will need a new CPU, and Memory.....lol.

__________________
"It is not that I have failed, but that I have found 10,000 ways that it DOESN'T work!" --Thomas Edison

cyrnel

Deltona, SATA is often not mentioned in the BIOS boot order. Enable everything and disconnect everything else to be certain. But at this point I doubt that's the problem.

What drive model is it? You may be running into an SATA 3Gbps issue with your motherboard. Some are 3Gbps "compatible" once Windows drivers are loaded (or the BIOS is updated) but have issues fully recognizing and booting a 3Gbps drive. Try installing the drive's rate limit jumper. Performance won't suffer; 1.5Gbps is more than your drive can supply.

You may have to ID the motherboard to see if there's an updated BIOS that would help. Of course, that's if you want to make it work.

__________________
There are a vast number of people who are uninformed and heavily propagandized, but fundamentally decent. The propaganda that inundates them is effective when unchallenged, but much of it goes only skin deep. If they can be brought to raise questions and apply their decent instincts and basic intelligence, many people quickly escape the confines of the doctrinal system and are willing to do something to help others who are really suffering and oppressed." -Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media, p. 195

Dilbert1234567

it should just be the hard drive, not SATA device, plug in the SATA drive and nothing else, see if that boots, if it doesn't where does it fail, blinking curser, invalid bootdisk...

__________________
Donate Blood!

"Love is not finding the perfect person, but learning to see an imperfect person perfectly." -Sam Keen

Shauk

unless your motherboard has on-board SATA support you're not likely to have SATA as a bootable option.

What kind of MB do you have? and are you using an expansion card for a SATA controller to mount your SATA drive? or are you plugging it straight into the motherboard? (if it's the latter, then i'm confusied, since I cant imagine a SATA plug being on a board without SATA bios options.)

and, of course, you do have it set up to be a master drive with the jumpers right? (i'd just as soon assume you aren't a complete noob though, but it's safe to ask)

cyrnel

This is common with non-Intel chipsets. They'll have settings for SATA drives but often not in the boot order.

We're talking SATA, no?

__________________
There are a vast number of people who are uninformed and heavily propagandized, but fundamentally decent. The propaganda that inundates them is effective when unchallenged, but much of it goes only skin deep. If they can be brought to raise questions and apply their decent instincts and basic intelligence, many people quickly escape the confines of the doctrinal system and are willing to do something to help others who are really suffering and oppressed." -Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media, p. 195

Dilbert1234567

SATA's don’t have M/S settings, they are serial.

__________________
Donate Blood!

"Love is not finding the perfect person, but learning to see an imperfect person perfectly." -Sam Keen

Shauk

ah, sorry, brain fart. I'm so freakin used to the old school drives.

Deltona Couple

I SWEAR I need to come to this thread at HOME instead of work where I can list the MB model. It is a 3.0 capable MB, I have all the settings enabled for SATA, and the Bios has the latest update as of Jan 1st, 2007.

The drive functions perfectly normal, the problem as stated is that the SYSTEM doesn't seem to allow me the option to use this drive as a boot device. Even if the drive itself was a dead drive, the system would atleast make an ATTEPT at booting if the BIOS had the drive as master boot.

This is a fully supported SATA MB. It is onboard, with no need for SATA card, all options for SATA support are enabled in the BIOS. It is an MSI MB.
And ther is no option for 'master' in an SATA drive system.(you are correct, not a noob, been building systems since 1985)

__________________
"It is not that I have failed, but that I have found 10,000 ways that it DOESN'T work!" --Thomas Edison

Shauk

well, in that case I'd hit up thier site support and look for a firmware update, heck, even contact thier support team if you want.

cyrnel

That would be recent. I had an image of some cob-web encrusted antique.

Can you give the rate limit jumper a try? It's free. Drive/controller compatibility issues have burned many of my evenings.

__________________
There are a vast number of people who are uninformed and heavily propagandized, but fundamentally decent. The propaganda that inundates them is effective when unchallenged, but much of it goes only skin deep. If they can be brought to raise questions and apply their decent instincts and basic intelligence, many people quickly escape the confines of the doctrinal system and are willing to do something to help others who are really suffering and oppressed." -Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media, p. 195

Deltona Couple

OK, I have FINALLY rememberd this thread when I got home, and wrote down the specifics. The MB is of course an MSI As stated, model number is K8NGM2 and it is the /L variation. It is a socket 939 (of course with a Athlon 64+ 3200 chip. It has the GeForce 6150 video and NForce 410 chipset.
So lets see what we can get.

__________________
"It is not that I have failed, but that I have found 10,000 ways that it DOESN'T work!" --Thomas Edison

Dilbert1234567

i still think your issue is driver based when you imaged your drive from PATA to SATA. try wiping your SATA and installing a fresh copy of windows to it.

__________________
Donate Blood!

"Love is not finding the perfect person, but learning to see an imperfect person perfectly." -Sam Keen

Deltona Couple

I was never PATA in the first place. I was ATA. And to be honest, I don't see how the installation of software has anything to do with the BIOS refusing to allow me to even select the SATA drive in the first place. That is my root problem, getting the BIOS to allow me to set the SATA device as a primary boot device. Even If I had nothing on the drive at all, the BIOS should ATLEAST let me select it as a device.

__________________
"It is not that I have failed, but that I have found 10,000 ways that it DOESN'T work!" --Thomas Edison

Dilbert1234567

PATA is parallel ATA, and yes it is mostlikely your root problem, if your MB tries to boot from the drive, and it doesn't have the instruction on how to do it on the drive, it wont boot. it's not going to hurt trying.

__________________
Donate Blood!

"Love is not finding the perfect person, but learning to see an imperfect person perfectly." -Sam Keen

cyrnel

Seriously, I can't remember any MSI boards that show SATA in the boot order. It's an unusual option. You'll see other options for SATA but for boot order they generally just end up first in the HDD sequence. Older BIOS versions throw them into SCSI. Honest, honest, honest.

If:
- BIOS HDD booting is enabled
- The disk is recognized
- The disk has a primary partition marked as active (assuming Basic disk)
- It has a valid installation of Windows
It should try to boot.

It'll still need the correct driver and you need to modify the entry in boot.ini but even without, the BIOS will at least make an effort and Windows will blow chunks. Since you aren't seeing anything I have to believe one of the above isn't right.

Do you at least see the HD LED flicker when it should be trying to boot?

__________________
There are a vast number of people who are uninformed and heavily propagandized, but fundamentally decent. The propaganda that inundates them is effective when unchallenged, but much of it goes only skin deep. If they can be brought to raise questions and apply their decent instincts and basic intelligence, many people quickly escape the confines of the doctrinal system and are willing to do something to help others who are really suffering and oppressed." -Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media, p. 195

Deltona Couple

What happens is that when I start up the system with no drives connected except the SATA, I get a lockup message stating "no bootable drives found" or something to that extent.

Yes Dilbert, I did know that PATA is Parallel ATA, and it is different. Its more like an SATA on steroids, where the drive can be read and written to somewhat seemlessly, and my MB does not support PATA. And itdoesnt even try to boot from the drive.

Yes, I have learned from MSI that is is an uncommon thing on their older boards. My mom Has a MSI Nero4 and it actually is capable of booting SATA, and hers works. According to the message I got from MSI support, my board, even though it SUPPORTS SATA and is fully capable of OPERATING an SATA drive, it does NOT support booting from SATA, and they have no plans on having any more support for my board, because it is a discontinued board, and they don't offer driver support any longer for older boards. (Like always in the computer world, if you are older than 3 months, you are outdated...lol) So I am out of luck, and have to buy a new MB if I want SATA booting. Thanks for the help guys, I guess this is why none of anyones ideas worked...lol.

Any suggestions on a new board? and yes, I AM on a budget, so I cant buy a $250 motherboard....lol. It has to support the AMD 64+ Athlon.

__________________
"It is not that I have failed, but that I have found 10,000 ways that it DOESN'T work!" --Thomas Edison

Jinn

I would try re-formatting the disk before you got another motherboard. I'm not convinced that it's your motherboard; I think whatever "clone" tool you used didn't copy the boot sectors correctly for a SATA drive.

__________________
"I'm typing on a computer of science, which is being sent by science wires to a little science server where you can access it. I'm not typing on a computer of philosophy or religion or whatever other thing you think can be used to understand the universe because they're a poor substitute in the role of understanding the universe which exists independent from ourselves." - Willravel

Dilbert1234567

first PATA is parallel ATA, you DO have parallel ATA on your mother board, after SATA was released in 2003, ATA was renamed PATA, please read up on it http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_ATA


if MSI says it can't boot from SATA, you're out of luck, however, you could place the boot sector on the PATA drive, then after the boot sector is read, and gets going, have boot.ini point to your SATA drive. then you could remove everything from you PATA drive except the parts that boot and point to the SATA drive, freeing up most of the space for data.

__________________
Donate Blood!

"Love is not finding the perfect person, but learning to see an imperfect person perfectly." -Sam Keen

cyrnel

Strange they released a board with everything else necessary, and a recent BIOS, but without SATA boot ability. Certainly possible but I'd be a little suspicious of the support information provided.

If you're serious about changing, I've installed ~15 Biostar Ge/T-force 6100 boards. Simple mATX boards much like yours. There are both AM2 and 939 versions for between $55 and $65. The 939 version uses DDR, the AM2, DDR2. Built-in video and PCI Express for upgrades. Very nice clocking options for the price point.

But I'd go with Dilbert's suggestion of separating boot and system across drives. It'd be the least effort, zero cost, and essentially zero impact on performance.

__________________
There are a vast number of people who are uninformed and heavily propagandized, but fundamentally decent. The propaganda that inundates them is effective when unchallenged, but much of it goes only skin deep. If they can be brought to raise questions and apply their decent instincts and basic intelligence, many people quickly escape the confines of the doctrinal system and are willing to do something to help others who are really suffering and oppressed." -Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media, p. 195

Deltona Couple

I will probably go with the option of changing the boot locations then like Dilbert said.

Sorry to differ in opinion with you JinnKai, but even if I had a brand new SATA drive, without it even being f-disked or formatted, a PROPERLY operating system would atleast TRY to look on the drive, and have the option to SELECT that drive as bootable. BIOS doesnt care if the drive is formated or anything, it is just looking for a physical device. But thanks for trying to help.

__________________
"It is not that I have failed, but that I have found 10,000 ways that it DOESN'T work!" --Thomas Edison

Dilbert1234567

actually, jinnkai and others have been on the right track, for the norm, most boards can boot from any sata or pata device, and the most likely cause of the issue would be driver related, boot sector related, or boot loader related. however, as msi confirmed, your board is a gimp, and just can't boot from a sata drive. not all mother boards will give you a nice clean message saying can't find an os to boot from, they can also just have a little blinking cursor, or worse give you a disk read error, which is even more confusing.

__________________
Donate Blood!

"Love is not finding the perfect person, but learning to see an imperfect person perfectly." -Sam Keen

Deltona Couple

I understand your opinion Dilbert, however my experience in the field has shown that even a junk drive that has major boot sector problems will still TRY to boot, and do show up in the boot device list. I found a friend at work this past Friday, and went over to test everything to make my mind at ease. He has a TYAN board that he uses his SATA drive as a boot device. We took out his drive and connected up mine, and the system booted. so now I atleast know that I can use the drive as a booter, just have to try your trick Dilbert. Can you give me details on how to set it up that way? I would appreciate it.

__________________
"It is not that I have failed, but that I have found 10,000 ways that it DOESN'T work!" --Thomas Edison

Dilbert1234567

it's a bit complex and it will be unique to your system, i can give you the general gist of it.


first, make a back up of your good system just in case.

you can use the recovery consoles 'bootcfg /rebuild' command to detect each of the operating systems in your computer, (instructions in the following link) then log out of the recovery console and reboot, you should be prompted with an option of which OS to boot from, choose the second, and that should be the second OS. once you've confirmed it working on the SATA drive, you can delete everything on the PATA drive except for the things in the root directory.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/291980

however, I'm not sure if your up to this, its complex and you can hose your operating system by mistake (thats why i said make a back up). and you must keep in mind if anything happens to that PATA drive, your computer can't boot. and if you accidentally delete the important files when your system is going, you computer will be fine until you reboot, then it will be screwed.

__________________
Donate Blood!

"Love is not finding the perfect person, but learning to see an imperfect person perfectly." -Sam Keen

Deltona Couple

Considering I have been building systems and repairing software since dos 1.1 ...lol. I think I am up to the challenge....haha. I will try what you have suggested. Looking forward to it, atleast until I can finally just get a new MB.

__________________
"It is not that I have failed, but that I have found 10,000 ways that it DOESN'T work!" --Thomas Edison

Dilbert1234567

good luck.

__________________
Donate Blood!

"Love is not finding the perfect person, but learning to see an imperfect person perfectly." -Sam Keen

Rekna

why not keep your OS on your original hard drive and just extend the system with the new drive?

Deltona Couple

Becuase the new drive is much faster than the old one!

__________________
"It is not that I have failed, but that I have found 10,000 ways that it DOESN'T work!" --Thomas Edison