Hi,

I apologize in advance for the cross-post as well as the length of the post;
I have previously posted this in an ASUS group and have contacted the
various suppliers involved, but I screwed around with this issue for better
part of a day with no luck and no one on the ASUS group had any ideas and I
have gotten no useful feedback from the manufacturers. so I thought I'd ask
the knowledgeable folks at these two places.

First the basics: I have the following system specs: an ASUS A8N32-SLI
Deluxe mobo, 2 GB RAM, AMD Athlon 64x2 4800+ processor, two 400 GB Western
Digital SATA drives running in spanning/JBOD mode (XP is installed here; the
"spanned" disk is the boot drive), with a legacy 120 GB Western Digital IDE
133 drive that I "brought over" when the machine was built -- it was in
place when the OS was installed. OS is XP Pro SP2, all service packs
installed. I built the machine a couple of weeks ago and all has been well.

The only issue I've had is doing backups over our Gigabit (wired) LAN to a
networked drive. I eventually decided that the network backup was just not
going to be reliable at this point (too many "delayed write failures" and
not enough time to try to figure out what was causing them, but have
narrowed it down I believe to one problem machine -- but I digress; sorry)
and decided to install another internal drive for nothing but backups. I
had a brand new 250 GB Maxtor IDE 133, so I decided to use it. To hopefully
avoid any Windows issues, I decided to put the drive on the secondary IDE
controller (this controller had nothing on it but an HP DVD burner; the 120
GB WD was on the primary IDE -- it was the only device on the primary
controller). Long, long, long, long story short, no matter how or where I
installed the 250 GB Maxtor, XP refused to boot, returning a black
"DOS-type" screen with a hardware configuration error message. I went
through every combination of jumpers on both the DVD burner and the 250 GB
drive, with the "best" result being the machine just sitting there with a
blinking cursor. The POST check was fine (1 beep). After exhausting all
the permutations/combinations of jumpers/cable connections as well as
swapping out the IDE cable, I decided to move the 250 GB drive to the
primary IDE controller and see what happened. I got the same results, again
no matter what jumper settings I used or which drive was plugged into the
master or slave ends of the cable. I finally broke down and used a WD SATA
drive that was going to go into another new machine and installed in on SATA
3. I got it set up properly in the NVIDIA RAID utility, Windows booted up
fine and the SATA drive is now my "backup drive". I should note that, at
any time during this process, I could remove the 250 GB IDE drive from the
system and it would boot up normally. I also scoured the BIOS looking for
something that I might have missed. I changed boot orders and something
that IIRC was called drive priorities or something to that effect. Nothing
mattered. All the devices were detected in the BIOS properly and it didn't
matter whether the JBOD array was first, last, or even in the boot device
list (it actually didn't seem to matter what was in the boot device list or
what order things were in).

One other thing that has me wondering if this has something to do with XP
and SATA boot drives: I have another machine (XP Pro SP2) that boots from a
WD 120 GB SATA drive. If I have an external USB2 hard drive plugged in when
that machine is re-booted, it will refuse to boot (displaying a DOS-type
black screen with a message about incorrect hardware configuration) until
the external drive is unplugged. XP was obviously installed on that machine
without the external drive being attached.

Anyway, the system works fine now, but not as I had desired. I guess I'll
build the
next system with the IDE drive, but I'd rather have it for data storage than
being my boot drive. I seem to recall having an issue with a Windows XP box
behaving something like this before, but I can't for the life of me remember
what I did to correct it. FWIW, I added additional storage drives to 3
other machines today with no problems at all (for the same network backup
issue), but none of those machines had SATA drives in them.

Sorry for the long post. Thanks in advance for any ideas or suggestions.


--
Bob Horton

> Sorry for the long post. Thanks in advance for any ideas or suggestions.

What was your question? Suggestion for what?

could your power supply not have enough oomph to drive this HD?


"Bob Horton" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:6db4g.76962$(E-Mail Removed)...
> Hi,
>
> I apologize in advance for the cross-post as well as the length of the
> post; I have previously posted this in an ASUS group and have contacted
> the various suppliers involved, but I screwed around with this issue for
> better part of a day with no luck and no one on the ASUS group had any
> ideas and I have gotten no useful feedback from the manufacturers. so I
> thought I'd ask the knowledgeable folks at these two places.
>
> First the basics: I have the following system specs: an ASUS A8N32-SLI
> Deluxe mobo, 2 GB RAM, AMD Athlon 64x2 4800+ processor, two 400 GB Western
> Digital SATA drives running in spanning/JBOD mode (XP is installed here;
> the "spanned" disk is the boot drive), with a legacy 120 GB Western
> Digital IDE 133 drive that I "brought over" when the machine was built --
> it was in place when the OS was installed. OS is XP Pro SP2, all service
> packs installed. I built the machine a couple of weeks ago and all has
> been well.
>
> The only issue I've had is doing backups over our Gigabit (wired) LAN to a
> networked drive. I eventually decided that the network backup was just
> not going to be reliable at this point (too many "delayed write failures"
> and not enough time to try to figure out what was causing them, but have
> narrowed it down I believe to one problem machine -- but I digress; sorry)
> and decided to install another internal drive for nothing but backups. I
> had a brand new 250 GB Maxtor IDE 133, so I decided to use it. To
> hopefully avoid any Windows issues, I decided to put the drive on the
> secondary IDE controller (this controller had nothing on it but an HP DVD
> burner; the 120 GB WD was on the primary IDE -- it was the only device on
> the primary controller). Long, long, long, long story short, no matter
> how or where I installed the 250 GB Maxtor, XP refused to boot, returning
> a black "DOS-type" screen with a hardware configuration error message. I
> went through every combination of jumpers on both the DVD burner and the
> 250 GB drive, with the "best" result being the machine just sitting there
> with a blinking cursor. The POST check was fine (1 beep). After
> exhausting all the permutations/combinations of jumpers/cable connections
> as well as swapping out the IDE cable, I decided to move the 250 GB drive
> to the primary IDE controller and see what happened. I got the same
> results, again no matter what jumper settings I used or which drive was
> plugged into the master or slave ends of the cable. I finally broke down
> and used a WD SATA drive that was going to go into another new machine and
> installed in on SATA 3. I got it set up properly in the NVIDIA RAID
> utility, Windows booted up fine and the SATA drive is now my "backup
> drive". I should note that, at any time during this process, I could
> remove the 250 GB IDE drive from the system and it would boot up normally.
> I also scoured the BIOS looking for something that I might have missed. I
> changed boot orders and something that IIRC was called drive priorities or
> something to that effect. Nothing mattered. All the devices were
> detected in the BIOS properly and it didn't matter whether the JBOD array
> was first, last, or even in the boot device list (it actually didn't seem
> to matter what was in the boot device list or what order things were in).
>
> One other thing that has me wondering if this has something to do with XP
> and SATA boot drives: I have another machine (XP Pro SP2) that boots from
> a WD 120 GB SATA drive. If I have an external USB2 hard drive plugged in
> when that machine is re-booted, it will refuse to boot (displaying a
> DOS-type black screen with a message about incorrect hardware
> configuration) until the external drive is unplugged. XP was obviously
> installed on that machine without the external drive being attached.
>
> Anyway, the system works fine now, but not as I had desired. I guess I'll
> build the
> next system with the IDE drive, but I'd rather have it for data storage
> than
> being my boot drive. I seem to recall having an issue with a Windows XP
> box
> behaving something like this before, but I can't for the life of me
> remember
> what I did to correct it. FWIW, I added additional storage drives to 3
> other machines today with no problems at all (for the same network backup
> issue), but none of those machines had SATA drives in them.
>
> Sorry for the long post. Thanks in advance for any ideas or suggestions.
>
>
> --
> Bob Horton
>

Peter <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:

>> Sorry for the long post. Thanks in advance for any ideas or
>> suggestions.

> What was your question?

How to get it to boot with the extra IDE drive presumably.

> Suggestion for what?

See above.

On Thu, 27 Apr 2006 22:03:46 GMT, "Bob Horton"
<(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:

>Hi,
>
>I apologize in advance for the cross-post as well as the length of the post;
>I have previously posted this in an ASUS group and have contacted the
>various suppliers involved, but I screwed around with this issue for better
>part of a day with no luck and no one on the ASUS group had any ideas and I
>have gotten no useful feedback from the manufacturers. so I thought I'd ask
>the knowledgeable folks at these two places.
>
>First the basics: I have the following system specs: an ASUS A8N32-SLI
>Deluxe mobo, 2 GB RAM, AMD Athlon 64x2 4800+ processor, two 400 GB Western
>Digital SATA drives running in spanning/JBOD mode (XP is installed here; the
>"spanned" disk is the boot drive), with a legacy 120 GB Western Digital IDE
>133 drive that I "brought over" when the machine was built -- it was in
>place when the OS was installed. OS is XP Pro SP2, all service packs
>installed. I built the machine a couple of weeks ago and all has been well.
>
>The only issue I've had is doing backups over our Gigabit (wired) LAN to a
>networked drive. I eventually decided that the network backup was just not
>going to be reliable at this point (too many "delayed write failures" and
>not enough time to try to figure out what was causing them, but have
>narrowed it down I believe to one problem machine -- but I digress; sorry)
>and decided to install another internal drive for nothing but backups. I
>had a brand new 250 GB Maxtor IDE 133, so I decided to use it. To hopefully
>avoid any Windows issues, I decided to put the drive on the secondary IDE
>controller (this controller had nothing on it but an HP DVD burner; the 120
>GB WD was on the primary IDE -- it was the only device on the primary
>controller). Long, long, long, long story short, no matter how or where I
>installed the 250 GB Maxtor, XP refused to boot, returning a black
>"DOS-type" screen with a hardware configuration error message. I went
>through every combination of jumpers on both the DVD burner and the 250 GB
>drive, with the "best" result being the machine just sitting there with a
>blinking cursor. The POST check was fine (1 beep). After exhausting all
>the permutations/combinations of jumpers/cable connections as well as
>swapping out the IDE cable, I decided to move the 250 GB drive to the
>primary IDE controller and see what happened. I got the same results, again
>no matter what jumper settings I used or which drive was plugged into the
>master or slave ends of the cable. I finally broke down and used a WD SATA
>drive that was going to go into another new machine and installed in on SATA
>3. I got it set up properly in the NVIDIA RAID utility, Windows booted up
>fine and the SATA drive is now my "backup drive". I should note that, at
>any time during this process, I could remove the 250 GB IDE drive from the
>system and it would boot up normally. I also scoured the BIOS looking for
>something that I might have missed. I changed boot orders and something
>that IIRC was called drive priorities or something to that effect. Nothing
>mattered. All the devices were detected in the BIOS properly and it didn't
>matter whether the JBOD array was first, last, or even in the boot device
>list (it actually didn't seem to matter what was in the boot device list or
>what order things were in).

I have one question. Does the computer boot without the 120GB IDE
drive connected?

>
>One other thing that has me wondering if this has something to do with XP
>and SATA boot drives: I have another machine (XP Pro SP2) that boots from a
>WD 120 GB SATA drive. If I have an external USB2 hard drive plugged in when
>that machine is re-booted, it will refuse to boot (displaying a DOS-type
>black screen with a message about incorrect hardware configuration) until
>the external drive is unplugged. XP was obviously installed on that machine
>without the external drive being attached.
>
>Anyway, the system works fine now, but not as I had desired. I guess I'll
>build the
>next system with the IDE drive, but I'd rather have it for data storage than
>being my boot drive. I seem to recall having an issue with a Windows XP box
>behaving something like this before, but I can't for the life of me remember
>what I did to correct it. FWIW, I added additional storage drives to 3
>other machines today with no problems at all (for the same network backup
>issue), but none of those machines had SATA drives in them.
>
>Sorry for the long post. Thanks in advance for any ideas or suggestions.

"Andy" <1@2.3> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed)...
> On Thu, 27 Apr 2006 22:03:46 GMT, "Bob Horton"
> <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
>
>>Hi,
>>
>>I apologize in advance for the cross-post as well as the length of the
>>post;
>>I have previously posted this in an ASUS group and have contacted the
>>various suppliers involved, but I screwed around with this issue for
>>better
>>part of a day with no luck and no one on the ASUS group had any ideas and
>>I
>>have gotten no useful feedback from the manufacturers. so I thought I'd
>>ask
>>the knowledgeable folks at these two places.
>>
>>First the basics: I have the following system specs: an ASUS A8N32-SLI
>>Deluxe mobo, 2 GB RAM, AMD Athlon 64x2 4800+ processor, two 400 GB Western
>>Digital SATA drives running in spanning/JBOD mode (XP is installed here;
>>the
>>"spanned" disk is the boot drive), with a legacy 120 GB Western Digital
>>IDE
>>133 drive that I "brought over" when the machine was built -- it was in
>>place when the OS was installed. OS is XP Pro SP2, all service packs
>>installed. I built the machine a couple of weeks ago and all has been
>>well.
>>
>>The only issue I've had is doing backups over our Gigabit (wired) LAN to a
>>networked drive. I eventually decided that the network backup was just
>>not
>>going to be reliable at this point (too many "delayed write failures" and
>>not enough time to try to figure out what was causing them, but have
>>narrowed it down I believe to one problem machine -- but I digress; sorry)
>>and decided to install another internal drive for nothing but backups. I
>>had a brand new 250 GB Maxtor IDE 133, so I decided to use it. To
>>hopefully
>>avoid any Windows issues, I decided to put the drive on the secondary IDE
>>controller (this controller had nothing on it but an HP DVD burner; the
>>120
>>GB WD was on the primary IDE -- it was the only device on the primary
>>controller). Long, long, long, long story short, no matter how or where I
>>installed the 250 GB Maxtor, XP refused to boot, returning a black
>>"DOS-type" screen with a hardware configuration error message. I went
>>through every combination of jumpers on both the DVD burner and the 250 GB
>>drive, with the "best" result being the machine just sitting there with a
>>blinking cursor. The POST check was fine (1 beep). After exhausting all
>>the permutations/combinations of jumpers/cable connections as well as
>>swapping out the IDE cable, I decided to move the 250 GB drive to the
>>primary IDE controller and see what happened. I got the same results,
>>again
>>no matter what jumper settings I used or which drive was plugged into the
>>master or slave ends of the cable. I finally broke down and used a WD
>>SATA
>>drive that was going to go into another new machine and installed in on
>>SATA
>>3. I got it set up properly in the NVIDIA RAID utility, Windows booted up
>>fine and the SATA drive is now my "backup drive". I should note that, at
>>any time during this process, I could remove the 250 GB IDE drive from the
>>system and it would boot up normally. I also scoured the BIOS looking for
>>something that I might have missed. I changed boot orders and something
>>that IIRC was called drive priorities or something to that effect.
>>Nothing
>>mattered. All the devices were detected in the BIOS properly and it
>>didn't
>>matter whether the JBOD array was first, last, or even in the boot device
>>list (it actually didn't seem to matter what was in the boot device list
>>or
>>what order things were in).
>
> I have one question. Does the computer boot without the 120GB IDE
> drive connected?
>
>>
>>One other thing that has me wondering if this has something to do with XP
>>and SATA boot drives: I have another machine (XP Pro SP2) that boots from
>>a
>>WD 120 GB SATA drive. If I have an external USB2 hard drive plugged in
>>when
>>that machine is re-booted, it will refuse to boot (displaying a DOS-type
>>black screen with a message about incorrect hardware configuration) until
>>the external drive is unplugged. XP was obviously installed on that
>>machine
>>without the external drive being attached.
>>
>>Anyway, the system works fine now, but not as I had desired. I guess I'll
>>build the
>>next system with the IDE drive, but I'd rather have it for data storage
>>than
>>being my boot drive. I seem to recall having an issue with a Windows XP
>>box
>>behaving something like this before, but I can't for the life of me
>>remember
>>what I did to correct it. FWIW, I added additional storage drives to 3
>>other machines today with no problems at all (for the same network backup
>>issue), but none of those machines had SATA drives in them.
>>
>>Sorry for the long post. Thanks in advance for any ideas or suggestions.


Yes, my question is this: why won't the computer boot with the new 250 GB
IDE drive attached, no matter what IDE connector it is attached to or what
jumper settings are used? As is stated in the middle of my long post, it
boots fine without that drive and boots fine with the SATA drive installed
in its stead. The machine has a 500 watt Antec power supply which seems to
be fine and works fine with the SATA drive attached. Also, the new 250 GB
drive is fine; I attached it to a different system today and formatted it
with no issues.

TIA

--
Bob Horton

"Andy" <1@2.3> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed)...
> On Thu, 27 Apr 2006 22:03:46 GMT, "Bob Horton"
> <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
>
>>Hi,
>>
>>I apologize in advance for the cross-post as well as the length of the
>>post;
>>I have previously posted this in an ASUS group and have contacted the
>>various suppliers involved, but I screwed around with this issue for
>>better
>>part of a day with no luck and no one on the ASUS group had any ideas and
>>I
>>have gotten no useful feedback from the manufacturers. so I thought I'd
>>ask
>>the knowledgeable folks at these two places.
>>
>>First the basics: I have the following system specs: an ASUS A8N32-SLI
>>Deluxe mobo, 2 GB RAM, AMD Athlon 64x2 4800+ processor, two 400 GB Western
>>Digital SATA drives running in spanning/JBOD mode (XP is installed here;
>>the
>>"spanned" disk is the boot drive), with a legacy 120 GB Western Digital
>>IDE
>>133 drive that I "brought over" when the machine was built -- it was in
>>place when the OS was installed. OS is XP Pro SP2, all service packs
>>installed. I built the machine a couple of weeks ago and all has been
>>well.
>>
>>The only issue I've had is doing backups over our Gigabit (wired) LAN to a
>>networked drive. I eventually decided that the network backup was just
>>not
>>going to be reliable at this point (too many "delayed write failures" and
>>not enough time to try to figure out what was causing them, but have
>>narrowed it down I believe to one problem machine -- but I digress; sorry)
>>and decided to install another internal drive for nothing but backups. I
>>had a brand new 250 GB Maxtor IDE 133, so I decided to use it. To
>>hopefully
>>avoid any Windows issues, I decided to put the drive on the secondary IDE
>>controller (this controller had nothing on it but an HP DVD burner; the
>>120
>>GB WD was on the primary IDE -- it was the only device on the primary
>>controller). Long, long, long, long story short, no matter how or where I
>>installed the 250 GB Maxtor, XP refused to boot, returning a black
>>"DOS-type" screen with a hardware configuration error message. I went
>>through every combination of jumpers on both the DVD burner and the 250 GB
>>drive, with the "best" result being the machine just sitting there with a
>>blinking cursor. The POST check was fine (1 beep). After exhausting all
>>the permutations/combinations of jumpers/cable connections as well as
>>swapping out the IDE cable, I decided to move the 250 GB drive to the
>>primary IDE controller and see what happened. I got the same results,
>>again
>>no matter what jumper settings I used or which drive was plugged into the
>>master or slave ends of the cable. I finally broke down and used a WD
>>SATA
>>drive that was going to go into another new machine and installed in on
>>SATA
>>3. I got it set up properly in the NVIDIA RAID utility, Windows booted up
>>fine and the SATA drive is now my "backup drive". I should note that, at
>>any time during this process, I could remove the 250 GB IDE drive from the
>>system and it would boot up normally. I also scoured the BIOS looking for
>>something that I might have missed. I changed boot orders and something
>>that IIRC was called drive priorities or something to that effect.
>>Nothing
>>mattered. All the devices were detected in the BIOS properly and it
>>didn't
>>matter whether the JBOD array was first, last, or even in the boot device
>>list (it actually didn't seem to matter what was in the boot device list
>>or
>>what order things were in).
>
> I have one question. Does the computer boot without the 120GB IDE
> drive connected?
>
>>
>>One other thing that has me wondering if this has something to do with XP
>>and SATA boot drives: I have another machine (XP Pro SP2) that boots from
>>a
>>WD 120 GB SATA drive. If I have an external USB2 hard drive plugged in
>>when
>>that machine is re-booted, it will refuse to boot (displaying a DOS-type
>>black screen with a message about incorrect hardware configuration) until
>>the external drive is unplugged. XP was obviously installed on that
>>machine
>>without the external drive being attached.
>>
>>Anyway, the system works fine now, but not as I had desired. I guess I'll
>>build the
>>next system with the IDE drive, but I'd rather have it for data storage
>>than
>>being my boot drive. I seem to recall having an issue with a Windows XP
>>box
>>behaving something like this before, but I can't for the life of me
>>remember
>>what I did to correct it. FWIW, I added additional storage drives to 3
>>other machines today with no problems at all (for the same network backup
>>issue), but none of those machines had SATA drives in them.
>>
>>Sorry for the long post. Thanks in advance for any ideas or suggestions.



Andy,

I mis-read your question; I apologize. I didn't try to boot the system w/o
the 120 GB drive, as it had been there from the start and hadn't been a
problem. I thought you were asking did the machine boot without the new 250
GB drive, which it did/does.

--
Bob Horton