SATA HDD Query

B

bandura

Member
Hello guys, first of all let me thank you for your very helpful forum.

I have an asus a8n-sli premium, and I face problems with the IDE HDD port, suddenly it stops responding and left the computer freezed and when I reboot I found no IDE HDDs.
After I disconnect and reconnect the HDD cable in the mb several times (3 min), it works fine, but it may be for 15 mins or 2 months, until it stops againa dn do the same thing.

I have an AMD 64 3800++ overclocked 8%, and 2.5GB DDR1.

I have 2 IDE HDDs, C: 80gb with XP and D:250GB as storage, furthermore I have a 320GB SATA, where there is a partition of 80GB with WIN7 and rest is storage and a 300GB USB external drive.

In order to fix the problem with the IDE HDD port on the mb, I plan to buy a 640GB SATA drive and divide it into 4 partitions, where 2x60GB will be used for winxp and win7 respectively and the rest 2x250 for storage and remove the IDE HDD at all. I will disable the IDE Channel0, and left theIDE Channel1 for the dvd and dvdrw.

My query is that, now when I disable theIDE hdd or the mb does not "view" them, although I put into bios to boot from the SATA, it does not, till IDE HDD drives will be shown again. Why does this happen? (since the only HDD attached is the SATA with the WIN7 on it.)

If I make the above changes, will I have any boot problems? (Having the 2 OS in different partitions of the same HDD??
Will my pc boot properly from the SATA HDD, since there will be no IDE HDD at all connected?

Thanks you very much
Bandura
 
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Hi Bandura, welcome to NST.
I imagine, if your system will not boot from the SATA drive, that your IDE drive was "system" in Disk Management, i.e. that's where all the boot files are, even for your Win7 OS.
Have you tried changing the IDE cable, in case the fault lies in that rather than in your mobo or HDD ?
If W7 is not "system" when booted, then you'll need to boot the W7 DVD and "startup repair" 3 times with just the SATA drive connected, so that all of the boot files are recreated on the SATA drive, if you want to be able to boot without the IDE.
 
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Terry60 thank you very much for your quick reply. I have changed 3 IDE cables and have the same problems, thus I realised that eventually the mb has the problem and not the cables, since I have bought 2 brand new and I still face the problem.

I tried to repair the Win7 through the DVD, as you suggested, but I did not have the sata driver for either vista or win7, therefore I could not find the Win7 instalation. Any ideas where I can find the appropriate driver?

In the attached file, c: has winxp (IDE) and d: has win7 (sata)

In case I buy the 640gb and remove the IDE HDD at all:

a) If I decide to install winxp first and then win7, do the XP have the drivers to "view" the SATA hdd during installation?
In case xp has the sata drivers, will I be able to install win7 in another partition of the same hdd?

b) In case I decide to install only win7, do win7 have the drivers to "view" the sata hdd during installation?

Thank you very much
Bandura
 

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W7 has all the necessary drivers.
Disconnect your IDE drive before you try to repair the W7 boot, and you'll probably find the W7 OS which the DVD couldn't find to repair (when you get the load drivers message), will suddenly reappear.
Vista (and W7 I imagine) can both have problems locating a system to repair when the PC contains a mix of IDE and SATA drives.
The only problem you'll have installing an OS to a SATA drive is XP before SP2. The SATA drivers were included in SP2.
As I speculated in my 1st post, XP is your "system". That's why there are no boot files on the W7 partition. When you do the repair, W7 will go from being "boot " "active" to "boot" "system" and "active".
You can then reconnect your IDE drive, but make sure the SATA boots first in the BIOS.
 
Again Terry60, thank you very much for your quick response.

Tomorrow, I will go and buy the 640gb sata HDD, since I cannot tolerate the IDE problems of the mb anymore. I face this problem for several months, but now it became more frequent. Furthermore my old 80gb is useless, "burnt" and I suspect that something happened during a mb IDE port blackout, since I have connected it to several computers and none have recognised it. I do not know if my thought is correct, but I did not make any changes (i.e drivers, programs, virus, etc) to the hdd to render it useless.

Thank you very much for your valuable help.
Bandura
 
Hello guys again, now I cannot install any windows in my pc.

I bought my new sata 2 640gb hdd and I divided it into 4 partitions, 2x65 for winxp and win7 and 2x240 for storage. Only winxp partition is primary & active, rest 3 are logical.

The problem is that although the files for xp are copied, when the pc restarts, it stucks on the black screen, after the device list, it cannot go further to continue winxp sp3 installation. Is there any problem, i.e. that xp sp3 will be installed in sata hdd?

I decided to install win7 instead of winxp in the same partition, but then again when pc restarts after the files copied from the cd, I take a msg saying "cannot read from the disk", "press alt, ctrl, del". Any ideas?

Any ideas of how to overcome above problem?
Is there any problem with the partitions?
Can I install win 7 in logical partition or should I make it active too? If yes then will I face any problem in dual booting?

Now that I put back the IDE hdd to write this msg, I got the dual boot screen, and when I chose win7, it needed the dvd to continue the installation! However, I do not want the IDE hdd anymore.

Thank you very much for your help.
Bandura
 
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If you want only 4 partitions, they can all be primary.
If you want more than 4, the first 3 can be primary, the 4th extended, and as many logical drives as you want inside the extended.
If you have the ability, make all your Windows partitions primary.
You can install Windows from XP onwards in Logical drives, but they can't be booted from them ( boot looks for the "active" primary, and logicals cannot be active)
Is your XP CD SP3 ? If so it should install without a problem. If it's SP1 or earlier and you're intending to update it to SP3 after the install, then you'll need SATA drivers available on a floppy disk at install.
 
Finally, I managed to install winxp in the primary, active, partition, whereas, win 7 are installed in a logical partition. Regarding the rest 2 partitions, they will be used for storage, therefore they are logical partitions too.

Is there any problem that win7 are in a logical partition and not in a primary one? (as you suggested below). Till now I do not have any problems at all.

Thank you very much
Bandura
 
W7 will have put its boot files in the XP partition because it's the only primary available.
That's not a problem at the moment.
Windows from XP onwards will install on a logical drive, provided there's a primary partition somewhere that can take the boot files.
If you ever decide to get rid of XP and just use W7, then the procedure will be complicated by your layout. It would be far simpler if both OSs were primary.
 
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