Multiple hard drives, unrecognized drives, unexpected change of boot priority.

  • Thread starter Thread starter Stan Hilliard
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Stan Hilliard

My C: partition is one of three partitions on a RAID 0 array that
consists two 250G HDDs. I have two other 250G HDDs running
individually. When I replace HDD number 3 with a new (unformatted) 1TB
HDD the three partitions on the other individual HDD disappears from
Explorer and the 1TB drive does not show either.

Drive 1 (two physical drives in array), C:, E:, and G:
Drive 2: D:, F:, H:.
Drive 3: I:
CD/CDV: Z:

Two other unusual events might be a clue to this problem:

Clue 1) I enlarged the partition on drive 3 to 250G with Partition
Magic v8. When I rebooted, PM had caused a change in boot order. Had
to use DEL to enter BIOS to correct the boot order so drive 1 is
first. This has happened before with PM. When booting properly the
boot priorities are:

SCSI-2 - 7Li_RAID
SCSI-1 - ST3250823AS
SCSI-0 - ST3250823AS
Bootable Add-in Cards

When the boot order is messed the RAID is on the third line.

Elsewhere in BIOS is:

First Boot Device: Floppy
Second Boot Device: CDROM
Third Boot Device: Hard Disk

Clue 2) During every normal boot-up the last text statement on the
screen prior to the windows startup screen is "Boot from CD".

Q1 - why can't I see the 1TB HDD and why does HDD #2 disappear from
Explorer when it is connected?

Q2 - Why would the boot order get messed when I reboot after using
Partition Magic to resize the partition I on drive 3?

Q3 - why would the boot-up screen say "Boot from CD"?

Advice will be appreciated,
Stan Hilliard

System: Windows XP SP2, home built computer, all drives are SATA, the
250G drives are Maxtor, the 1TB drive is Western Digital.
 
My C: partition is one of three partitions on a RAID 0 array that
consists two 250G HDDs. I have two other 250G HDDs running
individually. When I replace HDD number 3 with a new (unformatted) 1TB
HDD the three partitions on the other individual HDD disappears from
Explorer and the 1TB drive does not show either.

Drive 1 (two physical drives in array), C:, E:, and G:
Drive 2: D:, F:, H:.
Drive 3: I:
CD/CDV: Z:

Two other unusual events might be a clue to this problem:

Clue 1) I enlarged the partition on drive 3 to 250G with Partition
Magic v8. When I rebooted, PM had caused a change in boot order. Had
to use DEL to enter BIOS to correct the boot order so drive 1 is
first. This has happened before with PM. When booting properly the
boot priorities are:

SCSI-2 - 7Li_RAID
SCSI-1 - ST3250823AS
SCSI-0 - ST3250823AS
Bootable Add-in Cards

When the boot order is messed the RAID is on the third line.

Elsewhere in BIOS is:

First Boot Device: Floppy
Second Boot Device: CDROM
Third Boot Device: Hard Disk

Clue 2) During every normal boot-up the last text statement on the
screen prior to the windows startup screen is "Boot from CD".

Q1 - why can't I see the 1TB HDD and why does HDD #2 disappear from
Explorer when it is connected?

Q2 - Why would the boot order get messed when I reboot after using
Partition Magic to resize the partition I on drive 3?

Q3 - why would the boot-up screen say "Boot from CD"?

Advice will be appreciated,
Stan Hilliard

System: Windows XP SP2, home built computer, all drives are SATA, the
250G drives are Maxtor, the 1TB drive is Western Digital.
Click to expand...

MORE INFORMATION:
The change in boot order after running Partition Magic might be
independent from the inability to see the 1TB HDD. At least, it was
happening before I bought the 1TB HDD. I am thinking of fixing that
problem first. Here is more detail on what happens:

When the PC won't boot:
SCSI-0 - ST3250823AS (drive 2, not bootable)
SCSI-1 - 7Li_RAID ("Drive" 1, bootable, containing C:)
Bootable Add-in Cards
Click to expand...

I can make it boot by either disconnecting drive 2 from the PC, or by
moving the RAID to the first line in BIOS to make it the first HDD
seen during boot. Both methods have the same effect. I speculate that
if the RAID were named SCSI-0 instead of SCSI-1 it would always
remain on the top of the list boot order.

Question - How can I reverse the SCSI numbers given to drive 1 & 2, or
how can I get drive 2 off the list completely?

Stan Hilliard
 
MORE INFORMATION:
The change in boot order after running Partition Magic might be
independent from the inability to see the 1TB HDD. At least, it was
happening before I bought the 1TB HDD. I am thinking of fixing that
problem first. Here is more detail on what happens:

When the PC won't boot:

I can make it boot by either disconnecting drive 2 from the PC, or by
moving the RAID to the first line in BIOS to make it the first HDD
seen during boot. Both methods have the same effect. I speculate that
if the RAID were named SCSI-0 instead of SCSI-1 it would always
remain on the top of the list boot order.

Question - How can I reverse the SCSI numbers given to drive 1 & 2, or
how can I get drive 2 off the list completely?

Stan Hilliard
Click to expand...

MORE INFORMATION:
I neglected to explain earlier that the only drives running off the
motherboard are the two physical drives that make up the RAID. That is
all the SATA ports they motherboard has. Drives #2 and #3 run off an
add-in card: 2-port Serial ATA PCI #1301 by www.ppa-usa.com

Stan Hilliard
 
Stan said:
MORE INFORMATION:
I neglected to explain earlier that the only drives running off the
motherboard are the two physical drives that make up the RAID. That is
all the SATA ports they motherboard has. Drives #2 and #3 run off an
add-in card: 2-port Serial ATA PCI #1301 by www.ppa-usa.com

Stan Hilliard
Click to expand...

The PPC 1301 uses a VIA 6420/6421 chip. That supports SATA 150MB/sec.
If a SATA 300MB/sec drive is connected, you may want to install the
"Force 150" jumper for best compatibility. (The issue with VIA
and SATA 300MB/sec drives, applies to a lot of their Southbridges
as well. An exception might be the Southbridge on my current
motherboard, which I tested a few days ago and it works fine.
The VT8237S has a SATA 300MB/sec interface on it. But many
others could benefit from fitting the jumper.)

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductReview.aspx?Item=N82E16815108103

Not all SATA drives have jumpers. The Seagate drive I just bought,
has a 1x4 section, with room for two jumpers. Such a jumper area,
has one jumper for spread spectrum, and the other is the Force 150.

SATA is normally backward compatible. The exception seems to be
VIA, where their 150 interfaces won't autonegotiate properly
with 150/300 capable drives. The "force" jumper ensures that
150 is selected. The VT6420/VT6421 is made by VIA.

The drives on the PPA #1501 are classed as "SCSI", because they're
not Southbridge interfaces. The BIOS chip on the PPA #1501
supports INT 0x13, which is what helps the booting process.
If the BIOS chip was erased, then drives on the card would
not appear in the boot order. If there was an item in the
BIOS setup screens called "INT 0x13 capture" or "INT19 capture",
disabling that would also prevent the PPA card from showing in the
BIOS, but could disable the RAID array as well. So that doesn't look
very promising.

Try the Force jumper first, then post back. I cannot say I
understand why your system has gone to hell.

On my machine, the boot order changes if a drive is not
responding. My current machine is pretty good, in that
the boot drive is remembered correctly in most cases. I
have another motherboard, where virtually any disk going
missing, messes up the order and requires manual correction.
On that machine, visiting the BIOS is a popular pastime.

Paul
 
The PPC 1301 uses a VIA 6420/6421 chip. That supports SATA 150MB/sec.
If a SATA 300MB/sec drive is connected, you may want to install the
"Force 150" jumper for best compatibility. (The issue with VIA
and SATA 300MB/sec drives, applies to a lot of their Southbridges
as well. An exception might be the Southbridge on my current
motherboard, which I tested a few days ago and it works fine.
The VT8237S has a SATA 300MB/sec interface on it. But many
others could benefit from fitting the jumper.)

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductReview.aspx?Item=N82E16815108103

Not all SATA drives have jumpers. The Seagate drive I just bought,
has a 1x4 section, with room for two jumpers. Such a jumper area,
has one jumper for spread spectrum, and the other is the Force 150.

SATA is normally backward compatible. The exception seems to be
VIA, where their 150 interfaces won't autonegotiate properly
with 150/300 capable drives. The "force" jumper ensures that
150 is selected. The VT6420/VT6421 is made by VIA.

The drives on the PPA #1501 are classed as "SCSI", because they're
not Southbridge interfaces. The BIOS chip on the PPA #1501
supports INT 0x13, which is what helps the booting process.
If the BIOS chip was erased, then drives on the card would
not appear in the boot order. If there was an item in the
BIOS setup screens called "INT 0x13 capture" or "INT19 capture",
disabling that would also prevent the PPA card from showing in the
BIOS, but could disable the RAID array as well. So that doesn't look
very promising.

Try the Force jumper first, then post back. I cannot say I
understand why your system has gone to hell.
Click to expand...

Thanks, the Force jumper worked. It made the 1TB WD disk recognizable
to Acronis and PartitonMagic. Was able to create a 250 GB logical
partition with PM. No problems. After creating the partition I can see
it in Explorer -- couldn't before. The partitioning only took 1 minute
so PM must not have formatted it.

The new HDD went to the top of the boot priority list & had to change
that in BIOS.
 
1) It reads the new 1TB hard drive OK now that I jumper ed its pins
5&6 to force the 150 Mb/s card to recognize the drive.

2) I understand now what made the boot priority change. At startup, if
a hard drive has been added compared to the previous startup it will
go to the top of the boot order. It doesn't matter whether that drive
was added while the PC was shut down, or while previously running by
turning on an external drive, or by adding the first partition to a
new drive with PartitionMagic or Acronis. I was doing all of the
above.

The manually set boot priority persists between startups as long as
the drive configuration at startup is the same as it was during the
previous startup.
Stan
 
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