OMG, please help. I have an 80 GB Seagate SATA drive currently installed with Vista premium, working fine. I want to add a 320GB WD SATA which has some data on it that I need, but everytime I connect it and reboot, no matter what settings I put in the BIOS, my Vista will not boot. What am I missing?
Hi! Welcome to TechARP forums! After you add a new hard drive, make sure (in BIOS) to set the proper HDD boot priority. My guess is that it is trying to boot off of your 320GB WD SATA instead of your 80GB Seagate. Simply set your 80GB Seagate as the number 1 boot HDD and you will be good to go.
BIOS settings I don't know how long-winded to get to explain what I've tried so far, but I for sure have made my Seagate priority 1. It is recognized in BIOS as SATA primary master, then the DVD drive is SATA secondary master and the second SATA I'm trying to add is SATA secondary slave. I have recabled to change the DVD & WD drive around between secondary master or slave and it hasn't made any difference. I have always maintained my seagate in primary master. In the boot priority, I have my dvd drive in first, my seagate in second and the third disabled right now. I have also tried my seagate in first, my dvd in second and wd in third, as well as my seagate in first, my dvd in second and third disabled. Nothing makes any difference. As soon as I disconnect the wd, my seagate boots perfectly. Hook the wd back up and make sure the drives are all recognized properly and in the correct boot order in BIOS, and once it goes to reboot, nothing, just a black screen. It's got to be something else in the BIOS, but I can't find anything that allows me to manually control AHCI or anything like that. There is an option offering enabling or disabling SATA spectrum spread, but changing it either way has not helped either.
Hi Zy, I guess I'm not saying that quite properly either...it posts and begins to load the operating system, finishes running the green bars above "microsoft corporation", then goes to a blank black screen, no cursor, no error message, nothing...just hangs. Normally my system will run those bars, flash a black screen then continue to load vista. So maybe there's an update I'm missing or a driver I have to pre-install with just my seagate connected, before I can connect my west digital? It's just got me baffled that my seagate loads fine as the only drive connected, but plug that second one in and it suddenly won't load anymore.
Can't think of what's wrong. Possible a loose connection somewhere. Have you tried swapping the cables?
I have swapped cables. I even just tried disconnecting the dvd drive and getting as bare bones as possible. I've tried sata 1, 2, 3 & 4 slots in various combos as well. Is there another way to "slave" this wd drive in order to access the data I need off of it? Or is there a way to break into an iso file and select data out of it without having a partition or disc to reinstall the image to? I was able to use spotmau to make a partition to image file, but can't do much with the file. But really, I should be able to use this drive as a data drive...I probably could if I was willing to reformat it, but I don't want to lose the data on it.
Nope, safe mode freezes after running through a long list of files. I haven't updated my bios...might try that?
Pretty sure the Windows is causing the problem. Could be drivers. Do you have another system to test whether the hard disk is working?
The seagate has been in another system and worked fine, but again, it was the only drive in that system. I never tried to add the WD to that system with the seagate as the boot drive. But the seagate is working fine as the boot drive in this system, as long as it's the only drive. Soon as I add in the Western Digital, the seagate won't load anymore. Weird?
Possible a corrupted MBR of the western digital or something. I would say use an external drive to see if it resolves this matter.
I think that the alternate OS idea is good. Download an Linux live CD (such as Linux Mint), install the second hard disk, then boot the live CD. See if you succeed and if so what disks you can see. Regarding the "secondary", "slave" etc. in BIOS, far as I know this is an old IDE thing and doesn't really affect SATA (but if the BIOS experts here know differently, feel free to correct me). There's typically a BIOS option somewhere (such as under advanced option) specific to boot order. It sounds like your 320GB drive had Windows on it, too. Are you sure the Windows boot you see is from the 80GB drive?
Hmm.. I experienced this before. Not sure if it's the same problem you are facing, but in my case, it was a bad SATA cable, or rather a loose one. It wasn't connecting properly so Windows will try to start up but hang because it's trying to initialize the drive (but can never do so). I fixed the problem by simply replacing the SATA cable with a totally new one.
Have tried swapping other cables from other systems, still doesn't help. Have tried AHCI mode, still freezes at a blank black screen. Have given up, am going to just drop the drive into an enclosure and get what data I can that way off of my own system. Will never really know for sure maybe why these two particular drives just wouldn't work together.
Possible. The last time my drives refuses to work together was on PATA. I wouldn't run on auto-select jumper, had to manually define slave/master jumper for 2 different manufacturer of drive.
I hate leaving a problem unsolved, but it is just too time consuming right now...on PATA's, ya, I even had two drives where it wouldn't work with the master on the end of the cable, but would with the master in the middle, slave on the end of the cable, but jumpered correctly for master & slave. Computers! Thanks for everyone's suggestions for these SATA drives tho.
Wait.. It's a PATA drive? I thought you said it's a SATA drive. If it's a PATA drive, check and see if the HDD is set to Cable Select or fixed as Master or Slave. Sometimes, the problem can be due to the drive's Master/Slave/Cable Select setting and the PATA connector you used to connect the drive.
