Booting from a SATA II drive

Dro · Post by **Dro** » Sat Apr 08, 2006 9:58 am

I just bought a Western Digital 250 GB SATA II drive with a 16 MB cache and 3 Gbit/s transfer rate. I have an ASUS A8N Premium motherboard and an Athlon X2 3800+ Dual Processor. The problem I am having is that while I am able to boot from a standard SATA 150 MB/s drive, when I try to boot from my new drive it gives me the message ERROR in Locating the Operating System, after I just installed Windows XP. I had no trouble formatting the drive and accessing files. I just can't boot from it. Is there a step I am missing? What can I do? I really want to be able to boot from this drive to increase the performance of my computer.

Immortal · Post by **Immortal** » Sat Apr 08, 2006 11:43 am

im guessing you installed the OS to the new SATA-II drive?
If you did, its a problem with the MFT... i had the same problem with my old rig and had to do a full format... not a quick one!

Dro · Post by **Dro** » Sat Apr 08, 2006 3:49 pm

Thanks Immortal for your response. Here is what I did. First, I got the drive working using the disk maintenance tools of XP. Then I used Drive Image 2000 to transfer a bootable OS that I had made from my other SATA drives. I have had no problem getting other SATA drives to boot up after the transfer but in this case I got the message that the OS couldn't be accessed. So then I got my CD copy of Windows XP and started a fresh install. When it came time to choose the drive I had windows format the new SATA II drive with a NTFS partition. I don't know if this was a quick format or not. When the Windows files had loaded and the computer was ready to reboot to startup Windows for the first time, it gave the same message, that the OS couldn't be accessed. What should I do differently?

-mogwai · Post by **-mogwai** » Mon Apr 10, 2006 7:41 am

worked perfectly for me. this drive is pretty damn nice. everything boots up pretty damn fast.

Dro · Post by **Dro** » Mon Apr 10, 2006 7:47 am

I am wondering if the problem isn't that a different driver is needed for SATA II than for my previous serial drives. The ASUS A8N Sli MB has support for 3 Gbit/s drives via the NVidia 4 drivers. Maybe I have to make a floppy disk for the NVidia drivers and then load them via the F6 during the installation of XP? Does anyone have any experience with this? I am not trying to setup RAID at this point. I just want the plain SATA II drive to become bootable.

Dro · Post by **Dro** » Tue Apr 11, 2006 8:48 am

Somebody Help!!! I made a floppy disk copy of the NVidia 4 SATA driver from my ASUS installation CD. I did a full (not QUICK) format of my new SATA II Western Digital 250 GB drive. I pressed F6 at the appropriate time in the installation of a clean copy of XP. I pressed S at the appropriate time and loaded the SATA driver from my floppy. When the Windows OS was copied to the hard drive it needs to REBOOT. When it gets to the point of accessing the newly installed OS on the SATA II drive, it says, BOOTING FROM C:...OK! ERROR Loading operating system

I can't think of anything more to try. Does someone have anymore suggestions. My drive works fine as a second drive, it just doesn't want to function as a boot drive.

When I put my other SATA 150 MB/s drives back in the same SATA1 port, the OS loads normally as it should. This problem is maddening!!!

infinitevalence · Post by **infinitevalence** » Tue Apr 11, 2006 9:57 am

the other option is to create a slipstream version of xp with the driver already on the disk.

Dro · Post by **Dro** » Sat Apr 15, 2006 1:42 pm

I am still trying to get this new SATA II hard drive to boot the XP OS. I checked the Bios on the MB, it is AWARD revision 1006. I did a full format, not Quick. But when it tries to boot it says Error loading operating system. If I add a second SATA drive, the 150 MB/s type, on the second SATA port, it can skip over my new drive, and load from the OS on the slower drive. However, the new drive is able to store files. It just can't be used (as yet) to boot the system!

Has anyone encountered this problem? Would updating the Bios to revision 1009, the latest, help? I am at a loss right now!

confusedsoul · Post by **confusedsoul** » Mon Apr 17, 2006 10:18 pm

Change the setting in the BIOS for the drive from CHS to Large. Thats what was wrong with mine anyway. Probably have to format the MBR again as well.

Dro · Post by **Dro** » Wed Apr 19, 2006 3:39 pm

I tried changing the access mode from AUTO (I don't have CHS in my Bios) to LARGE. Now the system stops just after posting the PCI device list. The cursor just blinks. When the access is set back to AUTO again, it goes one step beyond that point and says Error loading operating system as before. So it doesn't help either way.

Does anyone know if updating the AWARD Bios revision 1006 (which I have) to the latest revision 1009 might make the difference? I am reluctant to flash the Bios because I have never done it before, they give all kinds of warnings about not doing it unless you have to, and people have told stories about the computer not booting up when the Bios was flashed. It makes me nervous about trying it. But if I was pretty certain that was the problem, of course I would do it.

Dro · Post by **Dro** » Thu Apr 27, 2006 10:16 am

I finally got the SATA II drive to boot!!! Thanks to all who helped me in this struggle.

I didn't need to update the Bios from revision 1006. What worked was to change the Bios drive setting to LARGE instead of AUTO. Somehow the A8n-sli premium MB could not identify the correct geometry of the hard drive. I was very close in my last post. But what I needed to do was to reinstall XP after I changed the setting. Someone suggested making a slipstream CD which includes SP2 on the XP installation disk. I made this CD and had no more problem. It booted up like a champ. The slipstream is easy to do (if you follow the cookbook type instructions posted on the Web) and well worth the effort because the SP2 becomes part of the initial installation which is much better.

Neo_Moucha · Post by **Neo_Moucha** » Sun Jul 02, 2006 9:45 am

Well well very interesting this topic - I recently bought two harddrives (exactly the same SATAII barracudas with the same firmware) and two motherboards - again exactly the same revision, model, bios revision etc.
and other parts - simply exactly the same two computers...
and! - one harddrive succesfully detected as LBA and the second as CHS!
of course I am not able to boot from the CHS drive (I used Norton Ghost to copy installed OS)....
Now trying the LARGE trick - I have only two options in the ASUS BIOS setup - AUTO/LARGE