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SCSI hard drive Boot Sequence.

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14 replies

by kevinfidler

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I an unable to force my SCSI HD (only HD in my PC) to boot as the primary boot device.

I have a Asus M2A-VM motherbord with an Adaptec 29160 Controller with a 73GB Segate Cheetah.

Intalled XP Pro with no problems, the setup detected the controller and HD with no issues.

I cannot however; set my SCSI HD as my primary boot device in my bios. My MB bios seems to only support IDE/SATA. If I set my primary boot device as my CD ROM and put my XP disc in the drive upon startup I will get the message "Press any key to boot from CD..." when the time runs out, the HD will boot up windows.

If I set the HD as the primary boot device (or only boot device), I get the message "BOOT DISK FAILURE".

14 replies

by cg it

Can't remember what Adaptec says in their installation instructions on how to get XP to see it's controller as a bootable device other than to choose "Boot SCSI / Boot Other"

So if you have the boot SCSI or boot other option in your BIOS, you use those.

by oh smeg

It is connected to an Adaptor that has no connection to the BIOS at all. So it remains invisible to the BIOS as as far as it is concerned it doesn't exist as the drivers are yet to be loaded.

As for booting the system all you should need to do is set the Optical Drive to Primary Boot and ignore the rest and the unit should boot from there provided that you have no Bootable HDDs installed that are not SCSI.

If you want to use SCSI Drives to Boot From it's always better to buy a M'Board with Built in SCSI so that the BIOS is expecting to find the SCSI Drives present and doesn't require extra drivers or other software to support the SCSI interface.

Col

by older mycroft

I didn't have the bottle to say that last night!

Old age y'know - wasn't brave enuff!!! :D

by cg it

during a PCI bus scan and assign an IRQ.
What might happen is that the IRQ assigned to the SCSI PCI card is a shared IRQ. This doesn't work well with Adaptec cards.

So if the mainboard BIOS sees the SCSI card and assign an IRQ then the mainboard BIOS boot order should be boot SCSI. That will force the system to look for the SCSI on the PCI bus.

All this is on the Adaptec site under their support pages for the Ultra Wide 160 29160 PCI card.

by kevinfidler

I have been to the Adaptec site before I went to the Asus site (forums) and then finally to this site for help, I will look at the pages under the heading you have listed before I ask for any more help.

Thank you,

by kevinfidler

CG IT,

I Visited the Adaptec Site support pages for the Ultra Wide 160 29160 PCI card, I followed their instructions to turn off IDE hard drive in bios so it won't look for any.
The site did mention the shared IRQ's my Card is the only PCI device in my MB aside from my PCI-e Vga Card (different buses right?)

I downloaded the 29160 manual off the site and setup my Card id (7 default) as it asked.

I visited the Seagate Site and setup my jumpers on my Hard Drive in accordance with the setup manal for that specific HD (ID 0).

I also Used FDISK to make sure my partition was Active, it is.

Now what is confusing me is that I can set my CD ROM as the first boot device with my XP cd in it, if I don't touch anything and the time expires after the message "press any key to boot from CD...." my had drive will boot windows with no further problems.

That is what I have been doing so far. My question is what difference does it make when I spin up my XP cd upon bootup, why only then will my SCSI Hard drive be viewed as a bootable HD?

Thank you for pointing me in the right direction, I have done alot of reading today and now know more then I did this morning.

by cg it

so, you can't boot to your SCSI drives unless your XP CD is in the CD drive?

I can't imagine the Asus BIOS not having the boot SCSI or Boot other option in the boot sequence.

The onboard controllers might be ATA/SATA however most all BIOSs I've come across[Award/Phoenix/Chips & Tech/AMI/HP/Dell ]have the boot SCSI option.

note: in the not so distant past, ATA was the standard for X86 architechture and it wasn't until the last couple of years that SATA became the standard. All major BIOS mfgs had ATA as the primary HDD controller. Now though ATA is still the primary controller, BIOS mfgs have SATA controller option with RAID or JBOD for SATA. But all usually have the boot SCSI option.

I looked at the M2A-VM user manual and though it doesn't specifically say use this option for boot SCSI it does have a picture of boot SCSI on page 2-32 [page 75 of the downloadable version]. So if you scroll though the HDD options, you ought to see boot SCSI which should force the BIOS to first scan SATA controllers, then scan the PCI bus for other controllers for a bootable device.

Did you ask on the Asus boards or the Adaptec boards for any directions on SCSI controller cards?

by kevinfidler

I find it hard to believe myself, although I cannot find anything what so ever regarding either SCSI or "OTHER" boot devices in my BIOS setup, it does have removeable as an option but that is just my floppy.

I have been at the Asus forums (asus site) and have asked specifically about my motherboard and controller with no success either.

Before I get too carried away I will download the manual and read what you have just read.

Thank you for your time, I very much appreciate it.

by kevinfidler

SCSI hardware successfully removed, PATA IDE Hard Drive sucessfully installed.

I saw what you were talking about in the manual on PG 75. The only way I could get the heading Hard Drives to appear in the bios boot menu is when I put my PATA HD back in. I enabled the SATA controller but was unable to get the hard drive selection menu as it shows in the manual.

My only concern now is who to sell my scsi hardware to. I've been hitting the Forums for 2 weeks now with the same results. It's over my head. At least I can say I tried.

Thank you for your time, I don't want waste any more of your time you could spend helping some one else.

by kevinfidler

You are correct,

I didn't install the 3rd Party Drivers during the setup of Windows XP. I bought my Card off of ebay and it came with no drivers. Usually I can find drivers with ease. And I did install the drivers for my controller after I installed my OS.

I do not know how to create a Thrid Pary Drivers Diskette for this Controller which after reading up on it, is actually my problem.

The Adaptec Site has drivers but they don't seem to work when I extract them to a diskette and then try to install them in windows setup by pressing (F6). So that's why it won't boot from the HD, right?

by oh smeg

Copy only the driver to the Root of a Floppy. If you copy it across in the Folder Windows is unable to install it as the Windows XP installer is unable to open Folders at the Loading Third Party Drivers Stage.

I've yet to have a problem when the right drivers are used with this.

Col

by cg it

they know how their equipment is supposed to work with the motherboards. They wouldn't be able to sell their SCSI cards and HDDs unless they worked with the motherboards.

did you install the SCSI drivers during Windows setup when it asked for SCSI and Mass Storage drivers and you pressed F6?

by kevinfidler

Thank you,

I'll download the driver from the adaptec site for xp again and copy only the driver to the root of the diskette.

I'll let you know how I made out.

Thanks.

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