[garystan]

I recently added a second SATA Hard Drive. A Seagate 1Tb 3G drive. I was functional
considering that the System kept asking for the drivers. In Device Manager, I could see the drive listed....with the yellow triangle/black exclamation point. Clicked it.....info said
"Update drivers".
The a few days later, I had a hard time getting past the AMI BIOS. It stopped at
"Auto-detecting SATA 1 ", probably referring to the main drive (with the OS). I did a cold
boot. All was fine. This scenario repeated once more.
Then the next bootup, I got the "NTDLR is missing. Press CTRL+ALT+DELETE to restart" message.
Referring to the Windows Loader ? I rebooted, but got the same message.
I tried disconnecting the second HD. The machine booted up with not one problem.
Question : Maybe the drive died ?
Question : Maybe the drive is too large for the BIOS ?
and
Question : Would it be safe to try it one more time......to see if I CAN get into BIOS, and
check the boot order ? (Without doing any damage to the BIOS)
My System :
Windows XP Pro, 32-bit
ASUS M3A78-EM Motherboard
320Gb SATA II HD (contains the OS)
Seagate 3G, 1Tb HD (the problem device?)
SATA Optical Drive
3.5" Floppy Drive
3Gb RAM
AMD Athlon II 240 2.8Ghz Dual Core Procesor
350 Watt Power Supply

NOTE : On the MOBO, there are four SATA ports. Two are used by the Optical drive
and the main HD.

Your advice ?

garystan

[Advertisements]

Hello,

All good questions. The first thing I would do is connect the drive, and make sure the cable is connected well. Then go into bios to make sure the drive has been detected. Then I would check the boot order and make sure your OS drive is the boot drive. It sounds like the boot order might be wrong. If the boot order is correct, then I would guess the new drive is probably bad. Is it an OEM or retail drive?

Note... just in case...
Sata is supposedly hot pluggable, but it's not really, so make sure that when you connect the drive, or anytime you work inside the computer, to always unplug the AC cord. Don't just turn off the computer, you need to unplug it. This is due to the fact that ATX power supplies always supply voltage to the motherboard even when the computer is off.

Note for Bios...
Yes, you can damage the bios if you don't know what you're doing. However, you can't do any damage until you "Save and exit". If you don't save, then no matter how many changes you make, it won't matter. What I'm getting at is... just change what you need to change and if you get lost or are unsure, do not save the changes and you won't mess up your bios. We're here to help, so if you ever become unsure of what to do, please ask first.

[makai]

Hello,

All good questions. The first thing I would do is connect the drive, and make sure the cable is connected well. Then go into bios to make sure the drive has been detected. Then I would check the boot order and make sure your OS drive is the boot drive. It sounds like the boot order might be wrong. If the boot order is correct, then I would guess the new drive is probably bad. Is it an OEM or retail drive?

Note... just in case...
Sata is supposedly hot pluggable, but it's not really, so make sure that when you connect the drive, or anytime you work inside the computer, to always unplug the AC cord. Don't just turn off the computer, you need to unplug it. This is due to the fact that ATX power supplies always supply voltage to the motherboard even when the computer is off.

Note for Bios...
Yes, you can damage the bios if you don't know what you're doing. However, you can't do any damage until you "Save and exit". If you don't save, then no matter how many changes you make, it won't matter. What I'm getting at is... just change what you need to change and if you get lost or are unsure, do not save the changes and you won't mess up your bios. We're here to help, so if you ever become unsure of what to do, please ask first.