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Primary Drive (removable drive) problem

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by maria512

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I have to install 6 new hard drives on our network. I understand that to format and fdisk the drive I have to set the floppy drive as the Ist boot and hard drive as 2nd and so on. I have managed to successfully format and reimage just one new drive, my problem is that the next 2 that I have tried to do the same with still boot up with a PXE boot even after I have configured the Boot Priority the same as the Ist one. I have disabled the PX boot in the Priority list, I have checked all cables etc. but still no luck on getting the floppy drive to read the disk first. Any help anyone?

4 replies

by w2ktechman

Some machines (HP machines) have an additional floppy boot option under security. If this is disabled then you will not get the option to boot to a floppy, even if it is 1st on the list. Look for an option for removeable media.

by maria512

Thanks for the help but I did not find the option. Today I checked one workstation that I installed a new drive in and and would not boot to floppy and one that was ok, the configs for both were exactly the same so am still stuck.

by fred07

Hi

In bios set "seek floppy on boot"

This will set it so it allways will seek the floppy first and if an error msg "not a supported disk" or some such shows on boot it means there is a floppy disk in the floppy drive and you simply pull it out and "press any key" to continue

You need not set "floppy first"

Just "seek floppy on boot" in bios and have the boot disk in the floppy when you start up.

fred

by jmasuda

You are trying to fdisk/ removable primary drives but you cannot boot from a floppy? Without knowing more information, here is a non-optimal but a quick workaround choices:
1. Let it boot from the network. Your boot server may offer a service directory where fdisk can be run.
2. Remove the LAN card or disable "Boot from Network" and "Boot from Other" in BIOS to prevent PXE from overriding the normal boot sequence. Floppy boot should then be possible. The floppy drive shows activity LED, right?
3. Boot from CD instead. Most OS installation CD can be booted from, and fdisk and format is on it.
4. Since you said they are removable drives, plug then in the PC that works and format there. Move them back to the problem PC once fdisk/format is done.

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