invalid boot drive

[Al Kaufmann]

When you get "invalid boot drive" at startup does it mean your hard drives
are starting to go or something else? It has happened a couple of times in
the past week and made me backup my system. I have checked out my smart
hard drives and they seem fine.

Ak

 

[Malke]

When you get "invalid boot drive" at startup does it mean your hard
drives
are starting to go or something else? It has happened a couple of
times in
the past week and made me backup my system. I have checked out my
smart hard drives and they seem fine.

How have you checked out your "smart hard drives"? Did you use a
diagnostic utility from the drive mftr. and run a thorough test? Or
what?

If you did a thorough test on each drive with the mftr.'s utility and
the test was good, then your next step depends on the exact error
message you get. The next time it happens, write down the error message
and post it.

Malke

 

[decoder]

When you get "invalid boot drive" at startup does it mean your hard drives
are starting to go or something else? It has happened a couple of times
in the past week and made me backup my system. I have checked out my
smart hard drives and they seem fine.

Ak

A corruption has probably occurred to the Boot.ini
Or has invalid entries.
The very first step, as you state this has only happened
a couple of times this past week, is to perform a system
restore to a point prior to the first unstance.

 

[Al Kaufmann]

How have you checked out your "smart hard drives"? Did you use a

diagnostic utility from the drive mftr. and run a thorough test? Or
what?

No, I just have a Silicon Image program running in the background that shows
me that the drives are okay - Smart enabled and threshold OK. I would not
run the Maxtor utility on the drive unless I have already replaced it with a
new drive and trnasferred the data.

If you did a thorough test on each drive with the mftr.'s utility and
the test was good, then your next step depends on the exact error
message you get. The next time it happens, write down the error message
and post it.

The error message is very simple, cannot find boot drive or invalid and it
asks me to insert something... I just power down and start up again. The
message comes from the Bios start up sequence right after it determines that
it cannot boot from the CD drives. Maybe the drives are getting tired and
just not getting up to speed fast enough for the bios?

Al

 

[Al Kaufmann]

A corruption has probably occurred to the Boot.ini
Or has invalid entries.
The very first step, as you state this has only happened
a couple of times this past week, is to perform a system
restore to a point prior to the first unstance.

Thanks but I don't think the bios gets that far, boot.ini is on the boot
drive it can't find. Also if it can't find the drive a restore would not do
anything.

Al

 

[Malke]

No, I just have a Silicon Image program running in the background that
shows
me that the drives are okay - Smart enabled and threshold OK. I would
not run the Maxtor utility on the drive unless I have already replaced
it with a new drive and trnasferred the data.


The error message is very simple, cannot find boot drive or invalid
and it
asks me to insert something... I just power down and start up again.
The message comes from the Bios start up sequence right after it
determines that
it cannot boot from the CD drives. Maybe the drives are getting tired
and just not getting up to speed fast enough for the bios?

Use Maxtor's diagnostic utility to do a thorough test on the drives
(assuming they are both Maxtors). You do not test the drives from
within Windows and the thorough test is not destructive. You do not
want to use MaxBlast (which is what you would use to transfer data to a
new drive); use PowerBlast. Here is a download link from Maxtor's site:

http://tinyurl.com/d9ef8

You will create either a bootable cd or floppy from the utility and then
boot from it. You may need to change the boot order in the BIOS.

Your last sentence is incorrect - that is not the way computers work.
The drives do not "get tired" or are not "fast enough for the bios". If
the hard drives pass the thorough test, there is a good possibilty that
your power supply is failing. Try swapping it out for a known-good one.

Malke

 

[Timothy Daniels]

When you get "invalid boot drive" at startup does it
mean your hard drives are starting to go or something else?
It has happened a couple of times in the past week and
made me backup my system. I have checked out my smart
hard drives and they seem fine.

How many HDs do you have in the system?

*TimDaniels*

 

[Al Kaufmann]

Use Maxtor's diagnostic utility to do a thorough test on the drives
(assuming they are both Maxtors). You do not test the drives from
within Windows and the thorough test is not destructive. You do not
want to use MaxBlast (which is what you would use to transfer data to a
new drive); use PowerBlast. Here is a download link from Maxtor's site:

http://tinyurl.com/d9ef8

You will create either a bootable cd or floppy from the utility and then
boot from it. You may need to change the boot order in the BIOS.

My boot drive are 2 Maxtor sata drives set up as a raid drive. I would
probably pull the drives out and test them with Powerblast in a different
machine. However considering the all the trouble to do that, I would
probably order and install a couple of new drives at the same time. The
current drives are almost 3 years old. (and starting to look small )

Your last sentence is incorrect - that is not the way computers work.
The drives do not "get tired" or are not "fast enough for the bios". If
the hard drives pass the thorough test, there is a good possibilty that
your power supply is failing. Try swapping it out for a known-good one.

Looking back some years I do remember a bios where I could set a delay to
allow the hard drive to come up to speed. A bad power supply is something
I'll have to remember. I have had that happen to me once before.

Thanks, I was hoping for an easy solution. :-(

Al

 

[Al Kaufmann]

How many HDs do you have in the system?

*TimDaniels*

On raid drive consisting of 2 Maxtor Sata drives and an older Maxtor hard
drive just used for backups.

Al

 

[Timothy Daniels]

On raid drive consisting of 2 Maxtor Sata drives and an older Maxtor hard
drive just used for backups.

When asking such questions, it helps to give all the details.
Are the RAID drives in mode 0 or 1? Have you checked their MBRs?
Is the "older" Maxtor HD SATA or PATA?
Is it on the motherboard controller? Which channel?
What is the HD boot order when the problem happens - i.e.
which HD is supposed to be doing the booting?
How old is the ROM battery? Are the battery contacts clean?

*TimDaniels*

 

[Al Kaufmann]

When asking such questions, it helps to give all the details.
Are the RAID drives in mode 0 or 1?

0 striped

Have you checked their MBRs?
No

Is the "older" Maxtor HD SATA or PATA?

ATA 133

Is it on the motherboard controller?
Yes

Which channel?

Primary Master (This old drive only has backups on it)

What is the HD boot order when the problem happens - i.e.

Floppy, CD-Rom, Serial-ATA

which HD is supposed to be doing the booting?

Serial ATA drives set up as raid 0 striped

How old is the ROM battery?

As old as the motherboard ABit NF7-S

Are the battery contacts clean?

Like it came from the factory.

I pretty sure the problem I have is not the hard drives so it may be the
power supply starting to fail or maybe the CMOS battery. If this problem
keeps happening, I can pull the drives and put them on another system to
track down the problem.

Thanks,
Al

 

[Timothy Daniels]

"Al Kaufmann" replied:

"Timothy Daniels" asked:

ATA 133


Primary Master (This old drive only has backups on it)


Floppy, CD-Rom, Serial-ATA


Serial ATA drives set up as raid 0 striped


As old as the motherboard ABit NF7-S


Like it came from the factory.

I pretty sure the problem I have is not the hard drives
so it may be the power supply starting to fail or maybe
the CMOS battery. If this problem keeps happening,
I can pull the drives and put them on another system to
track down the problem.

I asked about the old Maxtor and the battery because
it sounds like the BIOS might be going to the old Maxtor
to find the boot files instead of the RAID set. That's
also why I asked about the *HD* boot order, not just
the boot order. In my Phoenix/Dell BIOS, those two
boot orders are listed separately, and the HD at the
head of the *HD* boot order is the HD whose MBR gets
control from the BIOS and which expects to find an
'active' partition with a boot sector that can locate the
boot loader (nrldr). If the battery were to let the BIOS
revert to default settings, the BIOS would go looking
at the Maxtor for the boot files.

You might also try "alt.comp.hardware" and
"alt.comp.hardware.homebuilt" for more ideas.

If you do, let them know if you're overclocking.

*TimDaniels*