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Can't boot from Sata drive

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by trish44

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We just installed new 300 GB Seagate Sata drives in both of our computers. The installation went fine & we used Seagate's disk wizard to transfer data over, telling it that we want to use the drive as a boot drive & keep the old drive in the system. The program told us we completed the installation. Our drives are recognized by Windows XP & we can see data on them. However, when we try to change the boot sequence to boot from the Sata drive instead of the IDE drive we get the message: Error Loading OS & a black screen. Our motherboards are ASUS A8N-SLI boards & we have enabled SATA in the bios. What are we missing & what do we need to do to be able to boot from these drives? I do not see any additional SATA drivers on the ASUS web site & Seagate's site says their drives do not need any additional drivers. Can anybody help?

11 replies

by willcomp

Are SATA controllers set to IDE mode instead of RAID mode in BIOS?

Did you install nVidia SATA drivers on IDE hard disk prior to imaging disk?

If SATA is set to IDE mode or if changing to IDE mode does not help, a repair install of XP should resolve the problem. Instructions for a repair install:

http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/XPrepairinstall.htm

by hal 9000

Because you don't have the necessary drivers in place for the SATA Drive to boot.

As Will said maybe a Repair Install will work but I would recommend that you first disconnect the IDE Drive so that it remains unaffected by the Repair Install and you'll need the SATA Driver Disc handy when you start the Repair Install. If the SATA Drivers are on a Floppy you'll need to copy the ones required to the Root of another Floppy as you can not search floppies for drivers so just keep that in mind.

I don't know if a Repair Install will work here though as I've always told people to do a clean install of the OS & Software but it's worth a try as it may save you quite a lot of time though you'll have to reinstall all the Service Packs and Patches that have been applied since to OS was originally loaded if it works.

If it doesn't you'll need to install from scratch but it's worth a try just remember to remove the IDE HDD First or you will most likely find that you are wasting your time.

Lets know how you get on.

Col

by willcomp

Hello Colin.

Imaging IDE to SATA will work if SATA drivers are installed on IDE drive first.

This is an nVidia chipset board, so no F6 drivers are required for non-RAID SATA drives during XP installation if the nVidia SATA connectors are being used. Appears that she does have a single drive.

by trish44

So where do I get SATA drivers? Seagate's site says that their drives don't need additional drivers.

by willcomp47

Here's a link to nForce4 AMD chipset drivers which include SATA RAID drivers.

http://www.nvidia.com/object/nforce_nf4_win2k_6.86.html

Maybe I wasn't clear enough, but you do not need SATA drivers for a repair install or a clean install of XP on a single SATA drive. Drivers included in XP SP1 and later will work with nForce4 chipsets.

Disconnect IDE drive before doing a repair install.

by trish44

Thanks to all for your helpful suggestions. I think this might take a little more time than I have right now, but I will keep your posts & try them later. I appreciate all of your help.

by jamison.hooper

When you imaged the drive, it copied the boot.ini, which points to the IDE drive. So when you try to boot from the SATA drive, it's looking towards the IDE drive.

There are settings in the BIOS that will let you pick to boot from the SATA, but until you change your boot.ini on the SATA drive, it won't work.

Your best bet is to remove the IDE, and get the SATA working. After that works, add the IDE.

by thangarasugk

Dear,
You have to check about SATA drive, if its controlled by SOUTHBRIDGE means there is no problem. if you motherboard have seperate SATA drive then that will not allow to boot from SATA DVD.

by oh smeg

I would have thought that posting an answer 3 years after a question was asked was a waste of time and effort.

Col

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