Running 3 Computers:
1)AMD 3200 with ASUS A8n-SLI Deluxe MB in an ANTEC Sonata III case (500W PS) 1 x 200 GB IDE, 1 x 300 GB SATA
2)AMD 3200 with ASUS A8n-SLI Deluxe MB in an ANTEC Sonata II case (380W PS)2 x 300 GB SATA
3)Intel Core Duo in an ASUS P5B Deluxe MB in an ANTEC P190 +1200 case (1200W PS)1x 300 GB SATA, 5 x 500GB SATA II
Okay, I’ve had this problem for 2 years, and I have it on ALL my computers. The ANTEC Cases have very neat and easy to use removable HDD bays so I swap HDDs alot (but not the primary HDD)I do alot of video editing (hence all the HDDs)In addition to the HDDs in the computers I have another 10 or so on the shelf ready to swap in; with the price of a SATA Drive these days it just seems to be the nost economical and secure way to store my Data; I have found that files I burn to DVD become unreliable after several years. So here is the problem:
Whenever I swap a new drive into any of the three computers, the first time I boot I get the ntldr is missing msg. THe only way to fix it I have found is to unplug all the drives except the boot drive and then power up the system. It then immediately finds the right drive and boots up. After that I can plug the other drives back in again and everything is great until the next time I swap a drive. I don’t understand this. If the system is trying to boot from a different SATA, I can understand why unplugging all SATAs but the one I want works. What I don’t understand is why I can plug them all back in again afterwards and the system boots properly. Shouldn’t it hang again after I plug them in? It is obvious to me that it isn’t getting to my boot drive on poer up, and I have changed the order of boot devices in my BIOS several times, but to no avail. This problem (and fix)has been going on for years and is very consistent. I thought it was a power issue when I was running 4 x HDDs in each Sonata tower as the PS was small, ehich is why I upgrasded one of my machines to the P190 1200 W and dropped the other computers to two HDDs. This didn’t fix anything. In fact, my P190 gets the error if I forget to take my USB stick out before rebooting. Once that happens I get the error, and only removing the USB and rebooting doesn’t help; I have to remove any optical disk and open the case and unplug all the other drives too. This is a pain because the P190 has a side fan which I have to unplug whenever I open the case. I have come to just leaving the sides off all my cases now because the problem is so frequent.
What I don’t understand is why when it tries to load ntldr on the wrong drive it doesn’t continue looking until it finds the right one? I also used to think this was an issue with mixing IDE & SATA drives in the same machine, but that can’t be it because only one of my machines has an IDE Drive. All by boot drives are Maxtor SATAS and most of the Data Drives are Western Digital. (the others are Maxtor)
Help?
