Can't boot off new SATA drive

[Rebel1]

My present working configuration has two physical ATA drives. The master
is a WD 500GB drive partitioned at C:, E:, F:, H:, and I:. The slave is
a Seagate 160GB partitioned as D: and G:. (There are also two SATA
optical drives.)

I added a WD 1TB SATA drive, partitioned into five. I installed XP onto
the partition (L that will eventually become C: after I rearrange my
system. (The Seagate drive will be removed after transferring its files
to the WE 500GB, with new drive letters so there is no conflict with two
C: partitions; in the end, I'll still have two physical drives.)

My Asus M3A7-CM mobo recognizes the SATA drive. I'm able to install XP
onto it. But after telling the mobo to boot off the new drive, it
refuses to do so. I get this message:

"Windows could not start because of a computer disk hardware
configuration problem.

Could not read from the selected boot disk. Check boot path and disk
hardware."

It makes no attempt to boot of the next hard drive in sequence, the
WD500 I've been using without any problems.

Windows Explorer recognizes the new drive and its partitions, so I'm not
sure if Windows XP, SP3 needs special SATA drivers that I have to
download and install.

The most conspicuous difference in the new installation on partition L:
is that there are only five folders (RECYCLER, Program Files, System
Volume Information, Documents and Settings and WINDOWS) in the partition
and no files. In particular, there is no boot.ini file.

Any suggestions for getting the computer to boot of the SATA drive?

Thanks,

R1

 

[Paul]

My present working configuration has two physical ATA drives. The master
is a WD 500GB drive partitioned at C:, E:, F:, H:, and I:. The slave is
a Seagate 160GB partitioned as D: and G:. (There are also two SATA
optical drives.)

I added a WD 1TB SATA drive, partitioned into five. I installed XP onto
the partition (L that will eventually become C: after I rearrange my
system. (The Seagate drive will be removed after transferring its files
to the WE 500GB, with new drive letters so there is no conflict with two
C: partitions; in the end, I'll still have two physical drives.)

My Asus M3A7-CM mobo recognizes the SATA drive. I'm able to install XP
onto it. But after telling the mobo to boot off the new drive, it
refuses to do so. I get this message:

"Windows could not start because of a computer disk hardware
configuration problem.

Could not read from the selected boot disk. Check boot path and disk
hardware."

It makes no attempt to boot of the next hard drive in sequence, the
WD500 I've been using without any problems.

Windows Explorer recognizes the new drive and its partitions, so I'm not
sure if Windows XP, SP3 needs special SATA drivers that I have to
download and install.

The most conspicuous difference in the new installation on partition L:
is that there are only five folders (RECYCLER, Program Files, System
Volume Information, Documents and Settings and WINDOWS) in the partition
and no files. In particular, there is no boot.ini file.

Any suggestions for getting the computer to boot of the SATA drive?

Thanks,

R1

Run diskmgmt.msc from Start.

When you install multiple Windows OSes, and don't take
precautions, one partition will be marked "System" and
another one marked "Boot". And when that happens, you can
be in for surprises, if one of the disks is unplugged,
you delete a partition you don't think is being used,
and so on.

While your problem can be fixed, it requires a knowledge
of the boot process. And even then, you'll need to keep a
diagram somewhere, of which partition is "controlling"
things, so you don't accidentally remove a dependency from
the picture.

"System" contains boot files, while "Boot" contains system
files such as the Windows folder. Microsoft switched the
terms, just to confuse.

The partition that doesn't have the boot.ini, should appear
in the boot.ini of some other partition, as a new entry at
the bottom of its list. If you boot the disk with that
boot.ini on it, then you may see the orphan OS as a
boot option. While something like "bootcfg /rebuild" might
be suggested as a means to glue things together, that command
can also cause more problems than it solves. So rather than someone
just giving you a recipe, really you have to become
a rocket scientist first. Like later, you might
decide to just delete some partition (thinking, it is
no longer used), only to discover that the boot.ini
was running your whole computer.

To avoid this on my computer, my policies are:

1) When installing an OS, unplug all other disks but the
one getting the install. This prevents the installer crafty
logic, from entangling two disks and making them dependent.

2) Install no more than one OS per disk. Now, there's no need for the
installer logic to try to make one partition "in control",
have the only boot.ini, and present a menu to "manage" the
other OS partitions.

3) To change OSes, I select them from the BIOS popup boot menu
(F8 or F11, depending on brand of computer).

You're certainly allowed to relax those rules, but you have
to become a rocket scientist first. Bootcfg might be able to
fix it, and maybe some other helpful person here can guide
you to a successful conclusion.

Paul

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

My present working configuration has two physical ATA drives. The master
is a WD 500GB drive partitioned at C:, E:, F:, H:, and I:. The slave is
a Seagate 160GB partitioned as D: and G:.

That's *seven* logical drives--an enormous number!

(There are also two SATA
optical drives.)

I added a WD 1TB SATA drive, partitioned into five.

Seven plus five makes twelve! Why would anyone need or want so many
logical drives? What do you use each one for?

In my view, except for those running multiple operating systems,
almost nobody should have more than one or two.

Ken Blake, Microsoft MVP

 

[VanguardLH]

My present working configuration has two physical ATA drives. The master
is a WD 500GB drive partitioned at C:, E:, F:, H:, and I:. The slave is
a Seagate 160GB partitioned as D: and G:. (There are also two SATA
optical drives.)

<snipped the rest of the duplicated MULTI-posted message>

See replies to your SAME post that you separately MULTI-posted in other
newsgroups. Now you'll have to remember to which other newsgroups you
multi-posted and go check each of them for replies instead of having
maintained the discussion within a single cross-posted thread.

Learn to cross-post:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crossposting
http://www.blakjak.demon.co.uk/mul_crss.htm
http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/usenet/xpost.html

 

[RJK]

That's *seven* logical drives--an enormous number!



Seven plus five makes twelve! Why would anyone need or want so many
logical drives? What do you use each one for?

In my view, except for those running multiple operating systems,
almost nobody should have more than one or two.

Ken Blake, Microsoft MVP

I got confused, decades ago, as to which drive was really where !!!
....so atm, I have an internal 320gb hd as one large boot drive C:\ ...and
it's a primary partition | Disk 0 | Bus Number 0, Target ID 0, LUN 0 | SATA
port 0 (conufsingly marked SATA 1 on the board !),
....and| my internal "Disk 1" or, if you like, my second 160gb hd for data
only storage, is connected to SATA 2 port on mobo ! ...and is a drive D:\
....and is a primary partition !
....and my internal "Disk 2" or, if you like, my third 500gb hd for data only
storage is connected to SATA 3 port on mobo ! ...and is drive E:\ ...and is
a primary partition !

....and somewhere along the line, I ended up with a PCI-eSATA card in the
box, and an external eSATA 500gb hd that is drive F:\ ...as one large 500gb
primary partition, for Ghost 14.0 backups of drives c:\ d:\ and e:\
....and I had to add a driver to Ghost 14.0 bootup cd so that system could
see Jmicron JMB36X controller card, and could see the ext. 500gb hd, so that
I could restore a drive from it ! ...and I do remember having to
disconnect a mulit slot card reader several times so that natural/real drive
letter ordering wasn't mucked up.
....and keeping 2 x dvd drives as X:\ and Y:\ seemed to help matters, I
distantly remember !

So ....after all that, I think I know where all my drives are but, I'm not
completely sure !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

regards, Richard

 

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