PDA

View Full Version : ESATA drive boot problem


Kirk Gittings
4-Aug-2010, 15:16
Computer gurus....your opinion please.

I recently added another, larger, esata external drive to to my backup scheme. Same housing as before. Problem is if I start up the machine with the new drive turned on the computer won't boot. If I turn it on after booting all is well.

This never happened before when adding new external sata drives. I assume it is trying to boot from the new drive. The bios settings for boot priority seem to be fine 1) dvd drive 2) c:-hard drive 3) inactive.

What am I missing?

Vista Ultimate.
Preston
4-Aug-2010, 18:39
Kirk,

Try adding the external eSATA drive to the boot sequence in position #3.

I don't know if that will work, but it's worth a shot.

--P
Sevo
5-Aug-2010, 02:25
Have you already updated the motherboard (or RAID card) BIOS? New drives often have sizes or interface protocol extensions beyond the specs of the original BIOS.
gari beet
5-Aug-2010, 04:17
Is the new drive set to "slave" at the back? if it isn't the system may well try to boot from it. I had the same problem with my linux machine, this was the fix for my problem.

Cheers
Gari
Kirk Gittings
5-Aug-2010, 07:34
I've got to go out of town to visit the grand kids. I will try some of the solutions when I get back. Thanks all.
Richard M. Coda
5-Aug-2010, 10:24
Buy a Mac! :)
Ron Marshall
5-Aug-2010, 11:09
Buy a Mac! :)

No politics!
Kirk Gittings
5-Aug-2010, 11:45
i also have two Macs. They are not issue free believe me.
Bob McCarthy
5-Aug-2010, 12:51
Assuming there is no needed info on the disk and it's for storage, I'd do a clean wipe/reformat.

Might even pick up a little space, where the drive mfg's add-on "crap" was written.

bob
domaz
10-Aug-2010, 15:39
It has to be the Boot option if this is a PC. Just go into the BIOS (Usually you have to hold F2 or Del at startup) and look at your Boot options- hopefully it will list the SATA drives it detects and you can move the Internal one up. Make sure the ESATA drive is connected when doing this so the BIOS can detect it.
Kirk Gittings
10-Aug-2010, 16:07
already did the reformat originally, and just did it again.......

and as per the boot option see my original post, from what I ahve read this is the proper setting?
AFSmithphoto
11-Aug-2010, 06:55
Switching the jumper to "slave" as mentioned before is your best bet. Outside of that, it could be an issue with the SATA controller on your motherboard. My motherboard seems to get twitchy with four or more drives attached, even though it claims to support six. The pitfalls of building your own system I guess.
domaz
11-Aug-2010, 07:35
Switching the jumper to "slave" as mentioned before is your best bet. Outside of that, it could be an issue with the SATA controller on your motherboard. My motherboard seems to get twitchy with four or more drives attached, even though it claims to support six. The pitfalls of building your own system I guess.

This is a SATA drive- there is no master/slave, that is only with IDE/PATA. It seems the ESATA is getting recognized as the first drive by the BIOS and it's trying to boot off it. The BIOS really should be able to handle this correctly. However, if you really want to you could probably modify the NT Bootloader so that the second drive boot sector boots off the internal drive. This Knowledge Base (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/305595) article has the general procedure for a floppy disk- in your case it's actually a hard disk but that shouldn't matter.
Sevo
11-Aug-2010, 07:37
Switching the jumper to "slave" as mentioned before is ...

... no good any more. Kirk is talking about a SATA drive, and these have no masters and slaves (nor multiple devices on one cable).

My primary suspect is a BIOS with a wait time insufficient to spin up large drives. Beyond that, there might be power (management) issues that increase the risk of such a thing happening - server grade power supplies tend to stage supplying power to their various outputs to limit the boot-up current, which might delay a drive on the slowest power chain for too long to have the BIOS detect its presence. Consumer power supplies often get overloaded and go unstable on some cable or voltage, which often has a similar effect (though it should be erratic rather than consistent).

Sevo
Kirk Gittings
11-Aug-2010, 08:31
Oddly enough, I have maybe 6 eSata drives in housings plus this one (not all plugged in at the same time) this is the only one that has this problem. It is a 2GB Hitachi. It connects through a dock. Could that be related to the problem somehow? I don't see why it would.
LF4Fun
11-Aug-2010, 08:54
Kirk,
have you tried changing the bios to AHCI, this allows you to hotplug the external storage drives.

this post shows how to enable AHCI in Vista (http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/257792-30-vista-boot-pick-ahci-sata-mode)

you might want to try this first (http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/257142-32-when-adding-sata-storage-drive-boot)
Kirk Gittings
19-Oct-2010, 12:41
Just getting back to this. The problem as it turns out was with the dock. I recently decided to try a different dock, a Thermaltake with the same drive and it boots fine. BUT I am back to the problem of it not recognizing the drive when swapping unless I reboot the computer. This was not a problem with the previous dock which would not let me boot........if it ain't one thing its another.