Re: Making a SATA drive the boot drive

From: _Vanguard_ (see_signature)
Date: 12/17/04 

Date: Fri, 17 Dec 2004 11:18:40 -0600

"BobV" <robowa@comcast.net> wrote in message
news:%23%232eaP$4EHA.1120@TK2MSFTNGP11.phx.gbl...
>
> "_Vanguard_" <see_signature> wrote in message
> news:uPOrOYz4EHA.1292@TK2MSFTNGP10.phx.gbl...
>> "BobV" <robowa@comcast.net> wrote in message
>> news:uTuvqBz4EHA.2600@TK2MSFTNGP09.phx.gbl...
>>>I have a new ASUS A7N8X-E with a SATA controller on board, and a new
>>>WD SATA drive, and am finding it impossible to make it the boot disk.
>>>
>>> XP SP2 will recognize the disk as long as I have a IDE disk
>>> installed, and the SATA disk is usable, but I am unable to use it as
>>> the boot drive. If I try to reinstall XP without the IDE drive then
>>> the install won't run because it says that there are no drives at
>>> all.
>>>
>>> I can use XP's disk management to partition and format the SATA
>>> drive but this doesn't help.
>>>
>>> Any answers, thanks, Bob
>>>
>>
>> Did you configure the boot drive sequence in BIOS to actually use the
>> SATA ports to find a bootable hard drive? Is the SATA controller
>> enabled in BIOS? Did you install the SATA BIOS (it has its own BIOS
>> that loads after the system BIOS although it might share EEPROM
>> space), usually as part of the chipset driver package for your
>> motherboard?
>>
> I can find no way to configure the boot drive to use the SATA ports in
> BIOS,
> I see no way to enable the SATA controller in BIOS.
> No I did not install the SATA BIOS, as I am not sure what or where it
> is. It certainly is not mentioned in the MOBO manual.
>> --
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>
>

>From
http://www.asus.com/pub/ASUS/mb/socka/nforce2/a7n8x-e/e1322_a7n8x-e_deluxe.pdf,
page 4-16, the available devices for a boot drive are:

Floppy
LS120
HDD-0 (first physically discovered hard drive)
SCSI
CDROM
HDD-1 (second physically discovered hard drive)
HDD-2
HDD-3
Zip
USB-FDD
USB-Zip
USB-CDROM
USB-HDD
LAN
Disabled

I don't see SATA mentioned although the mobo uses the Silicon Image SATA
controller chip. So my guess is that you select SCSI. SCSI is actually
handled as a generic BIOS-supported device rather than just for SCSI
devices. SCSI BIOS loads after the system BIOS, as do IDE controller
cards and SATA controllers and cards.

It is possible that this motherboard will not support booting from a
SATA drive and instead only supports RAID using SATA devices. I noticed
the SATA ports are labelled "SATA_RAID1" and "SATA_RAID2". I have two
SATA ports on my Abit mobo and they are just labelled as "SATA1" and
SATA2" although they can be used for single drives or used with RAID. I
have already used a lone SATA port with one hard disk as a bootable
Windows XP drive. Page 2-20 of your Asus manual says:

"These Serial ATA connectors support SATA hard disks that you may
configure as a RAID set."

Most onboard SCSI and SATA controllers don't let you create a RAID set
from existing basic volumes without destroying their contents. I
suppose you could try to use the SATA BIOS setup screen on bootup to
configure a RAID set and then install Windows on it, but you'll need 2
SATA drives (for RAID-0 or -1).

You might be screwed in trying to use a lone non-RAIDed SATA drive as a
boot drive and will get stuck with having to use an IDE drive to boot
your system. Perhaps someone in the alt.comp.periphs.mainboards.asus
with the same mobo can help you if they figured out a workaround. 

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