how do you make a SATA drive the active bootup disk

[Hunter]

Archived from groups: alt.sys.pc-clone.dell (More info?)

attempting to setup only SATA as bootup device but ran into a
definition snag

is there anything special that needs to be done in Dell bios
(dimension 4100) to tell it (or does it need to be told..) that there
are no IDE HD devices after swithing over to all Serial ATA (SATA)
drives?

the bios currently has this list as bootup sequence

FLOPPY
ARM-FDD
ARM-HDD
IDE
ATAPI CDROM

once all IDE harddrives are removed, does the bios react
faster/better/no matter if the IDE is totally gone from the bios list
(bios is version A11)

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.sys.pc-clone.dell (More info?)

hunter wrote
> is there anything special that needs to be done in Dell bios
> (dimension 4100) to tell it (or does it need to be told..) that there
> are no IDE HD devices after swithing over to all Serial ATA (SATA)
> drives?

just access the BIOS before it loads, after you connect the SATA drive(s)
remove the BIOS IDE section (disabled) but leave the Secondary IDE since
that is where your CDROM devices are and they usually are IDE

> once all IDE harddrives are removed, does the bios react
> faster/better/no matter if the IDE is totally gone from the bios list
> (bios is version A11)

it should't matter, but how are you going to make the SATA drive active?
perhaps someone will advise you on that...assuming that you cloned the
drive(s)
with something like Symantec Ghost32.exe

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.sys.pc-clone.dell (More info?)

"hunter" <huntertaylor@surfeu.fi> wrote in message
news:4ac02c0e.0404260834.5098090c@posting.google.com...
> attempting to setup only SATA as bootup device but ran into a
> definition snag
>
> is there anything special that needs to be done in Dell bios
> (dimension 4100) to tell it (or does it need to be told..) that there
> are no IDE HD devices after swithing over to all Serial ATA (SATA)
> drives?
>
> the bios currently has this list as bootup sequence
>
> FLOPPY
> ARM-FDD
> ARM-HDD
> IDE
> ATAPI CDROM
>
> once all IDE harddrives are removed, does the bios react
> faster/better/no matter if the IDE is totally gone from the bios list
> (bios is version A11)


Turn off all IDE1 devices or just temporarily disconnect the ribbon cable
from the mb. Move the CDROM up to first boot device. Be sure the SATA drive
is enabled in the controller card BIOS.


Stew

 

[Hunter]

Archived from groups: alt.sys.pc-clone.dell (More info?)

S.Lewis wrote
> Turn off all IDE1 devices or just temporarily disconnect the ribbon cable
> from the mb. Move the CDROM up to first boot device. Be sure the SATA drive
> is enabled in the controller card BIOS.

thank you for the suggestions

did all that and the problem is that despite the PCI/SATA card listing
both SATA drives at bootup, I get a "Insert Bootable Disk: A" prompt
and the drives are not seen by DOS

tried also running Windows Recovery Console and it also fails to
detect the SATA drives

if I hook back in the IDE drive, then there is no problem seeing the
SATA drives (they just become Disk1(SATA) and Disk2 (SATA) where the
boot drive (IDE) becomes Disk0)

next question : is there a generic SATA driver that can be loaded
before Windows Recovery Console starts to enable it seeing the SATA
drives?

or is this a problem with the A11 - Dell Dimension 4100 BIOS or that
the motherboard is too old to support this type of thing?

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.sys.pc-clone.dell (More info?)

The SATA card should have come with drivers on a disk.
Then in XP setup you push the button when it asks about loading
the SCSI drivers. The Dell BIOS(A11) dates back to the upgrade from
ME to XP on those machines, summer of 2001 is when mine arrived.
All this is before SATA.

"hunter" <huntertaylor@surfeu.fi> wrote in message
news:4ac02c0e.0404270548.6f1c5476@posting.google.com...
> S.Lewis wrote
> > Turn off all IDE1 devices or just temporarily disconnect the
ribbon cable
> > from the mb. Move the CDROM up to first boot device. Be sure the
SATA drive
> > is enabled in the controller card BIOS.
>
> thank you for the suggestions
>
> did all that and the problem is that despite the PCI/SATA card
listing
> both SATA drives at bootup, I get a "Insert Bootable Disk: A" prompt
> and the drives are not seen by DOS
>
> tried also running Windows Recovery Console and it also fails to
> detect the SATA drives
>
> if I hook back in the IDE drive, then there is no problem seeing the
> SATA drives (they just become Disk1(SATA) and Disk2 (SATA) where the
> boot drive (IDE) becomes Disk0)
>
> next question : is there a generic SATA driver that can be loaded
> before Windows Recovery Console starts to enable it seeing the SATA
> drives?
>
> or is this a problem with the A11 - Dell Dimension 4100 BIOS or that
> the motherboard is too old to support this type of thing?

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.sys.pc-clone.dell (More info?)

"Pen" <pen34us_nospam@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:ReSdnaa1VvqsCxPdRVn-ug@adelphia.com...
> The SATA card should have come with drivers on a disk.
> Then in XP setup you push the button when it asks about loading
> the SCSI drivers. The Dell BIOS(A11) dates back to the upgrade from
> ME to XP on those machines, summer of 2001 is when mine arrived.
> All this is before SATA.
>

<snip>

Agreed. That timeline is about right. My machine had A06 when bought in
2/2001. Also, I'd think the XP install driver option might work as well....

 

[Hunter]

Archived from groups: alt.sys.pc-clone.dell (More info?)

Pen wrote
> The SATA card should have come with drivers on a disk.

it did and I used the Maxtor Win2003 SATA/PCI 150 driver disk
in fact, Windows 2003 Recovery Console automatically detected the
floppy and loaded it

> Then in XP setup you push the button when it asks about loading

ok, as mentioned, the OS is Windows 2003 (which is NT 5.2 where xp is
NT 5.1)

> the SCSI drivers. The Dell BIOS(A11) dates back to the upgrade from

I finally managed to get into Windows Recovery Console and it prompted
me for Administrator password and I got in.

I ran Bootcfg /rebuild and verified all was ok (at least it listed the
correct information)

after rebooting, the system still had the Win 2003Ent CD but it loaded
both SATA drives and told me it had detected a change and asked me to
restart

I took out the CD and rebooted and it stops again after detecting both
SATA drives and asks for "Insert Bootable Disk: A"

In BIOS, there is no floppy, only Secondary IDE has CDROM and I tried
also disabling IDE totally, no difference, tried enabling (despite no
IDE devices and same thing)

apparently somehow, the SATA drive still is not bootable, what am I
missing?

just as a side note, I've run on this Dimension 4100 Win 2003 for
months with no problems, the system has performed flawlessly and I
only wanted to go "all SATA" drives due to their speed and size, the
existing IDE drive is 40gb but it is about 10 times slower than the
Maxtor SATA 120gb

I also used a dedicated PCI/SATA 150 card, also by Maxtor so there is
nothing connected to the motherboard. Apparently there is just some
setting missing on the SATA drive to make it bootable

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.sys.pc-clone.dell (More info?)

Errr you have loaded the drivers for the SATA drives have you? when
installing XP it gives the option F6 i think to add third party controllers
you then have to load the floppy disk which is difficult if your machine
didn't ship with FDD
"hunter" <huntertaylor@surfeu.fi> wrote in message
news:4ac02c0e.0404271453.e55eb9f@posting.google.com...
> Pen wrote
> > The SATA card should have come with drivers on a disk.
>
> it did and I used the Maxtor Win2003 SATA/PCI 150 driver disk
> in fact, Windows 2003 Recovery Console automatically detected the
> floppy and loaded it
>
> > Then in XP setup you push the button when it asks about loading
>
> ok, as mentioned, the OS is Windows 2003 (which is NT 5.2 where xp is
> NT 5.1)
>
> > the SCSI drivers. The Dell BIOS(A11) dates back to the upgrade from
>
> I finally managed to get into Windows Recovery Console and it prompted
> me for Administrator password and I got in.
>
> I ran Bootcfg /rebuild and verified all was ok (at least it listed the
> correct information)
>
> after rebooting, the system still had the Win 2003Ent CD but it loaded
> both SATA drives and told me it had detected a change and asked me to
> restart
>
> I took out the CD and rebooted and it stops again after detecting both
> SATA drives and asks for "Insert Bootable Disk: A"
>
> In BIOS, there is no floppy, only Secondary IDE has CDROM and I tried
> also disabling IDE totally, no difference, tried enabling (despite no
> IDE devices and same thing)
>
> apparently somehow, the SATA drive still is not bootable, what am I
> missing?
>
> just as a side note, I've run on this Dimension 4100 Win 2003 for
> months with no problems, the system has performed flawlessly and I
> only wanted to go "all SATA" drives due to their speed and size, the
> existing IDE drive is 40gb but it is about 10 times slower than the
> Maxtor SATA 120gb
>
> I also used a dedicated PCI/SATA 150 card, also by Maxtor so there is
> nothing connected to the motherboard. Apparently there is just some
> setting missing on the SATA drive to make it bootable

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.sys.pc-clone.dell (More info?)

Hunter - did you solve this problem? I am having (nearly) the exact
same problem..... I would really appreciate your help.

==============
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[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.sys.pc-clone.dell (More info?)

OK, I have mine working. I was running XP Pro on an older 40Gb and
added a Promise FastTrack 150 SATA card and WD 200 GB. System
recognized the new drive, no problem. BIOS showed a new 'Option ROM'
entry in the boot device choices. This was the Promise card.
I needed to install XP on the new SATA drive and still preserve the
old drive stuff so I could transfer my old data files later. The SATA
drive would be my new boot drive.
Go into BIOS and remove IDD HDD from the boot list and replace it with
the 'Option ROM'. Rebooted from the XP CD and did my install to the
SATA drive. The install still showed the older drives but now also
showed the SATA drive as my drive C:. Make SURE to hit F6 when the
upgrade process starts so the system will prompt you for the SATA
driver floppy.
Completed the install and rebooted. System came up from SATA with no
problems and the IDE drives were still accessible. If I need to
reboot into my old configuration I just change the boot device in the
BIOS from 'Option ROM' to IDE HDD. Once I transfer over my old data
files I'll clear the IDE drives and use them for backups.
Actually a pretty smooth process overall.

==============
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[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.sys.pc-clone.dell (More info?)

"pittdave" wrote:
> Go into BIOS and remove IDD HDD from the boot list...

What is "IDD HDD"?

*TimDaniels*

 

[Dave]

Archived from groups: alt.sys.pc-clone.dell (More info?)

Looks like a typo....should be IDE-HDD.

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.sys.pc-clone.dell (More info?)

"Dave" <dshirsh@comcast.net> wrote in message
news:cjHwc.53421$eY2.47598@attbi_s02...
> Looks like a typo....should be IDE-HDD.
>
>

Probably change the order it looks for boot drives in the BIOS.