XP Won't start with Additional SATA Drive

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Guest

Hi,
yesterday I got home to find my XP desktop (CyberpowerPC custom) showing an
error "Unable to load OS" - tried several things with no result. Inserted the
Recovery disk which instead of recovering installed WinXP from scratch. I
have 2 HD set on Raid0 plus a 3rd HD that I use for backup, all of them
SATA300. They always worked fine.
After installation XP showed some device problems (one of them, sounde
device not working when there was actually proper sound; DVD playback not
working also). I noticed that XP changed my drives letters renaming my Backup
drive from D to C and renaming the Raid drives to D from C. So files where
being installed on C when the OS was actually on D. Sorry if this is getting
complicated... bear with me...
I decided to redo a clean install but every time I started the OS
installation, the installer kept saying that my Raid was D and the backup
drive C even after changing the backup drive letter to Z with PartitioMagic
8. After various attempts I decided to unplug the backup drive and magically
the installer called the Raid system as C, the magic letter! I finally
reinstalled WindowsXP and all worked fine, until I re-plugged the backup
drive and after the BIOS loads I get the OS load Choice message and when I
chose the first (the new install) it won't work saying some file is missing.
If I unplug the backup drive everything works fine.
I looked into the backup drive to see if there was some system files but
there was nothing, I had previously deleted by hand an installation. No
invisible files that I'm aware of...
Anyone has any idea of what is causing this? I'd sure appreciate some help.
Thanks!

Luca
 
Hi,
yesterday I got home to find my XP desktop (CyberpowerPC custom) showing an
error "Unable to load OS" - tried several things with no result. Inserted the
Recovery disk which instead of recovering installed WinXP from scratch. I
have 2 HD set on Raid0 plus a 3rd HD that I use for backup, all of them
SATA300. They always worked fine.
After installation XP showed some device problems (one of them, sounde
device not working when there was actually proper sound; DVD playback not
working also). I noticed that XP changed my drives letters renaming my Backup
drive from D to C and renaming the Raid drives to D from C. So files where
being installed on C when the OS was actually on D. Sorry if this is getting
complicated... bear with me...
I decided to redo a clean install but every time I started the OS
installation, the installer kept saying that my Raid was D and the backup
drive C even after changing the backup drive letter to Z with PartitioMagic
8. After various attempts I decided to unplug the backup drive and magically
the installer called the Raid system as C, the magic letter! I finally
reinstalled WindowsXP and all worked fine, until I re-plugged the backup
drive and after the BIOS loads I get the OS load Choice message and when I
chose the first (the new install) it won't work saying some file is missing.
If I unplug the backup drive everything works fine.
I looked into the backup drive to see if there was some system files but
there was nothing, I had previously deleted by hand an installation. No
invisible files that I'm aware of...
Anyone has any idea of what is causing this? I'd sure appreciate some help.
Thanks!

Luca
Click to expand...
The BIOS is set to boot from your backup drive (also the reason
Windows setup kept assigning C: to it). Go into BIOS setup and change
the Hard Disk Boot Priority or Hard Disk Drives setting, moving the
raid drive to the top.
 
Hi Andy,

that was my first thought too but when I checked the BIOS the RAID was
first...

Thanks,

Luca
 
Does your bios enable you set all the boot devices to raid?

Have you checked the boot paths, in msconfig?
 
yeah, msconfig is fine.
Drives in RAID are on SATA 1 and SATA 2 ports, Backup is in SATA 8
(secondary channel).

A few more details... all my drives are Western Digital, the 2 RAID are
250GB each (and the computer sees them as one 500GB drive) and the 3rd one is
a 500GB drive (and I'm running our of space, haha - also have 3 external
USB2.0 drives: 250GB, 400GB, 80GB - but these are not connected so no prob).

My mobo is a MSI K9N SLI Platinum Nforce 570 chipset so highly configurable
Nvidia.

I've been playing around with the BIOS all morning (how do people without
any tech knowledge do? 99% of computer users... bah!) and now the OS boots
normally every single time... got a new problem though: the 3rd drive (the
backup) is invisible to Windows... ehm... partially. Have no idea why. If I
click on the "remove hardare icon" in the system tray it will show it, if I
go to the Devices list it will show it (Device working properly), but when I
go to my computer it's not among the devices and if I do "Add Hardware"
Windows gives no signs of it. I wish I had another computer to plug the drive
there and see if it's ok, but until last night it was working fine, all the
data was there, and I certainly didn't format it.

The mystery continues...
 
Forgot to add: also PartitionMagic 8 does not see the backup drive even if
Windows partially drive. If WinXP sees it partially even as a non-formatted
drive then PM8 should definitely see it. Right?

Luca
 
That was supposed to be "even if Windows partially does" not "partially
drive" sorry...

Luca
 
Back to the problem...

The BIOS sees the backup drive (and it's enabled).

nVidia Mediashield (RAID preparation) see the backup drive (and wants me to
make it part of the RAID before I format it. UGH! I don't wanna format it, as
of last night all my data was still there)

Windows Device Removal Utility (the little icon on the system tray) sees the
backup drive.

and now the weird part:



Windows does NOT see it in the connected devices (My Computer)

Device Manager does NOT see it among the Hard Drives

WD Lifeguard does NOT see it

System Information does NOT see it

Computer Management does NOT see it.



This is weird isn't it?



Luca
 
So just since I was left with no other choice I started playing around with
the nVidia chipset RAID setting (calling the menu right after the BIOS) and I
added the backup drive as a new RAID all by itself...in a JBOD array I know,
weirdness never stops (minutes ago I didn't even know that JBOD and Spanning
were the same thing) and now it works fine! All my data is there, even the
name of the HDD is still there.

Thanks for all your help guys. And thinking that it all started with WinXP
crashing and not recovering and reinstalling changing the drive letter...

It was frustrating but I saw the light, I feel sorry for those people who
have no clue about computers and have to spend hundreds of dollars to fix
them.


Good day to you all!!


Luca
 
Luca Diana said:
I feel sorry for those people who
have no clue about computers and
have to spend hundreds of dollars
to fix them.
Click to expand...


I sometimes wonder about them, too.
I also suspect that they don't install
RAID systems. :-)

*TimDaniels*
 
LOL. True enough.

A thing I find absurd is how programs, including WindowsXP backup utility,
insist on having a backup floppy. It's been ages since I saw a PC with a
floppy drive. Not even my two laptops have it.
The recovery DVD that came with my desktop asked for a floppy and because I
didn't have it (they didn't give me one, and I wouldn't need it since I have
no drive) it reinstalled the OS.

Ok, now back to reinstalling a gazillion programs! :(
 
Some sata/raid controlers will only allow a single drive if its prepared as
JBOD (just a bunch of disks)
JBOD is simply another array as is raid 0, raid 1, raid 5 etc

WinNTbackup is a very old application from the days when a 3.5 floppy was a
new 'toy' and cd was unheard of.
Just think if MS was to 'update it' the howls of 'unfair competition' from
the third part suppliers of backup solutions
 
Yeah, the weird part is that until two days ago it worked just fine the way
it was (and I had it for 2 months) and now it'll work only as JBOD.

Luca
 
To the best of my knowledge when any type of array is built raid
data/settings are written to the hd I would have thought therefore that it
was possibly origonally set up as JBOD, If your controler has a JBOD option
then allmost certainly a sata hd will not be detected unless this has been
set up.
It maybe that when you reinstalled winxp these settings were ovewritten -
just guessing.
 
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