Paul
Tue May 27 09:15:49 PDT 2008
John wrote:
> This is somewhat similar to the problem I posted here on 20 May under
> "SATA Western Digital......" except that my PC is trying to boot from a
> new SATA drive instead of the existing 2 SATA drives in a RAID 0 array
> which have Win XP and everything on them.
>
> I've done everything Paul suggested without success.
>
> Paul, you mention the Bios enumeration order and which disk is
> discovered first. Can this be manipulated at all?
Don't mind the following. Just making a few notes.
*******
GA-8i915P Duo Pro
http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/Products/Motherboard/Products_Overview.aspx?ProductID=1802
F6 BIOS contents -
8i9pdup.BIN
awardext.rom
ACPITBL.BIN
AwardBmp.bmp
awardeyt.rom
font1.awd
font2.awd
_EN_CODE.BIN
_B5_CODE.BIN
_GB_CODE.BIN
dbios.bmp
b169d.pxe Broadcom boot from net
SATARAID.BIN Intel(R) RAID for SATA - v4.0.0.6180
VIARAID.ROM VIA VT6410 RAID BIOS
PPMINIT.ROM
FINER.BIN XpressRecovery
dbf.bin Dual BIOS flash
SPECIAL.FNT
Southbridge -
1 IDE cable - managed by main BIOS
4 SATA ports - managed by SATARAID.BIN ? (no room in main BIOS display?)
VT6410
2 IDE cables - managed by VIARAID.ROM
*******
The enumeration order doesn't generally change.
Two things might control it. The first, is the order of execution
of BIOS modules. The main BIOS runs first. It definitely manages
the IDE cable on the Southbridge. Then, if the four SATA ports
are set to RAID mode, the SARARAID BIOS is loaded. It will do
detection on up to four disks. External chips run last. So the
VIARAID might run later than the Southbridge ports. It is really
hard to tell with the Gigabyte BIOS, because there should have
been room in the main disk display screen, for the max six disks
on the Southbridge.
On the PCI bus, you do have some control of enumeration order.
PCI slots are examined in address space order, and if the motherboard
designers did their job properly, PCI1 would be examined before
PCI5. People who have several SCSI cards, take advantage of
features like that, and juggle card order, in order to get
whatever property they're after. (Place card you expect to boot
from, in PCI1. In case there is insufficient room for option ROMs
to load.)
But, if you wanted to alter the relationship of PCI slots,
versus other hardware in the system, there is no way to
change that. At least on a desktop board - a server BIOS
might be different.
Things that are unclear in my mind, are the impact of disks
marked "active". I would have expected, that their status would
only matter at the instant you try to boot from them. But I don't
know if each BIOS module does some investigation during
disk detection or not. It is possible a USB mass storage
BIOS module, might do something like that. In the case
of the above BIOS, it is possible the USB mass storage code
is hiding in the main BIOS module. And it is unclear to me, when
the USB mass storage code would run - during main Southbridge
examination, or later.
What is somewhat puzzling, is how this could appear in your main
disk display screen in the BIOS. Quoted from your other thread:
"In Bios, the standard CMOS features show the following:
IDE Channel 0 Master HL-DTST DVD RAM GSH (The IDE DVD RW?)
IDE Channel 0 Slave None
IDE Channel 2 Master S_ATA1_ Raid drive
IDE Channel 2 Slave S_ATA2_ (the Western's id)
IDE Channel 3 Master S_ATA3_ Raid drive
IDE Channel 3 Slave S_ATA4_ (the Pioneer's id)"
I would not have expected that, based on the picture shown in the
Gigabyte manual. That looks more like other motherboard displays
and how they behave.
If this was my computer, I would
1) Boot into Linux (Knoppix or Ubuntu)
2) Use the "dd" (disk dump) command, to erase the first 50MB or so
of the new hard drive. This is so all partition information
that might have been placed on there at the factory, would be removed.
Alternatives, are erasing programs like DBAN (sourceforge.net), but
all other hard drives must be removed before running that one!
Very dangerous, as it erases all hard drives connected to the
computer, at the instant it is run. It can erase up to 99 disks
simultaneously.
You might also find, that if just the 400GB was connected,
you booted a Windows installer CD, that Windows might refuse
to install on the new disk. If that happened, I would again
suspect something at the very beginning of the disk, is
confusing the software. When that happened to me, that is
when I started reading about "dd". There is even a Windows
version of "dd", but I'm not comfortable using something
like that in Windows. You have to be absolutely sure about
the command syntax - unlike other Windows programs, that might
prevent you from damaging C:, the Windows version of "dd" would
have no trouble at all, erasing the very volume it is booted
from. Which is one of the reasons I've never used it (I've only
tried the --list option).
When booting from a Linux LiveCD, you cannot delete the CD, so
only the target disk can be accessed by "dd" in that case - as
long as only the disk to be erased is connected, it is
pretty hard to foul up the command syntax in a destructive
way. A command like this, from a Knoppix terminal window,
would erase the beginning of a hard drive at /dev/sda.
This should take less than 30 seconds.
sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda bs=512 count=10000
HTH,
Paul
>
> What would happen if I disconnect both SATA RAID drives and the new
> drive and the SATA DVD-RAM which occupies the fourth SATA slot (and
> which worked immediately on being installed on my MoBo) and rearrange
> them? Will any of the 4 SATA slots do for anything or is there a
> correct order in which particular peripherals (and particularly drives)
> should be connected, known only to the MoBo (the manual doesn't mention
> this)? The company which assembled my PC chose the slots to connect the
> 2 drives set up as a RAID array. They happen to show up in BIOS as
> masters.The full details are in my earlier post. I haven't touched
> those, although I've swapped the DVD-RAM and new HD around, because I'm
> terrified I might mess up the RAID array (which took me days to set up
> when I ftook delivery of the PC when new and/or not be able to access
> the OS and/or lose data?
>
> Is it risk freesafe or is better not to do this or would it make no
> difference anyway?
> John
>
> P.S. Randall,
> If like me, you are repeatedly connecting and dis-connecting the new
> drive while trying to find the solution, make sure you recheck the HD
> priority in the BIOS each time or the new drive will keep being listed
> as first!
>
>
> "randalls" <foodphotographerREMOVETHIS@yahoo.co.uk> wrote in message
> news:randalls.27e2ebd@pcbanter.net...
>>
>> Hi all, I originally ran my xp sp2 pc with a SATA main boot disk. This
>> failed, so I replaced it with a new IDE disk drive I had. this was
>> some time ago, so I cant remember what I did at the time, but I have
>> tried now to install a SATA data only drive. The problem is the PC is
>> trying to boot up from this sata drive & just goes dead as there is no
>> OS on this disk. I have checked the BIOS & it should be looking at the
>> IDE drive to boot up - but there is clearly a problem as soon as I
>> enable the on board sata drive & install the disk, - any
>> suggestions/help ? thanks
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> randalls
>