Re: 160 Gb drive in a removable caddy give "disk error press ctrl alt del" on boot


"neil" <neilp67_@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
I wonder if anyone can answer this for me. I had a Seagate drive that
was
deemed faulty with the above fault so I returned it under warrantee. I
received a replacement that gives the same error at the first boot
during
the windows XP setup routine. With the drive in the removable caddy the
error occurs but if I connect the drive to the IDE cables directly the
drive will boot ok. I have a 120Gb drive normally working in the bay
and that
has always been fine, my second drive is a 250Gb drive so the bios does
not
have a problem with large drives. All IDE cables are 80 pins type.
Any suggestions are welcome.

thanks
Neil


On 29 Nov, 00:44, "philo" <ph...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
The caddy or it's base *CAN* fail...
I have about 25 removable drives in a total of three computers and have
found that the caddy or it's base can fail from time to time...


"neilp" <neilp67@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:723a58ab-5c63-4a9a-979e-48d76cfc941d@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Hi,
I dont think its a failure of the caddy because I can still use the
120Gb drive as normal & if I put in a 20Gb drive into the caddy which
I have fitted the 160Gb previously the 20Gb drive will boot and load
the OS on that disk.
Neil


Neil:
Just to ensure we're talking about the same type of component - a mobile
rack that's affixed to a desktop's 5 1/4" bay that has a removable tray
(caddy) housing a HDD -- that's right, isn't it? And if so, you're working
with only a single mobile rack, right?

1. First of all, has this problem just arisen, i.e., has the Seagate *ever*
worked properly while it was installed in the mobile rack or has it *never*
properly functioned while installed in the mobile rack?

2. And you say that when the removable tray contains your bootable 120 GB
HDD it boots & functions just fine, right? Obviously indicating there's no
problem with the rack itself, right?

3. But when you insert your bootable Seagate 160 GB HDD in the *same*
removable tray in the *same* mobile rack, you get the "disk error..."
message you refer to and the drive is not bootable. Right?

4. But you know there's nothing wrong with the Seagate because it boots &
functions just fine when you connect it as an internal HDD, right? And when
you do this the Seagate is jumpered as Master and is connected to your
Primary IDE connector on the motherboard, right? And your mobile rack is
similarly connected as Primary Master when it's in use? So that when you
connect the Seagate as an internal Primary Master (for testing purposes),
you disconnect the mobile rack's IDE cable connected to the rack and use it
to connect the Seagate, right?

Think there's any chance that the problem you're experiencing may be in the
HDD jumpering as related to the IDE cable connections/configurations to the
motherboard's IDE channel(s)?
Anna

P.S.
You indicated in a subsequent post that you think the problem may be due to
the large-drive limitation involving HDDs > 137 GB. But didn't you indicate
that the full disk capacity of your 250 GB HDD is detected in your system
without any problems?

(I note the comment from a responder to your query to the effect that
"Caddys are not that reliable for the larger hard drives (greater than the
bios LBA limit of 137GB.)". That has not been our experience and we have
worked with a wide variety of mobile racks in many, many systems over the
year. As long as the BIOS supports large-drive capability and your XP OS
contains SP1 and/or SP2 at the time you install the OS onto the HDD, there's
no problem with the mobile rack itself not detecting HDDs > 137 GB. At least
we've never once encountered that problem.)


.

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