The Greedy Man, IDE & SATA, A Confused Combo

[Tom Saurus]

I recently upgraded my computer. The price of rahm had dropped to half the price I paid for it last year so now I have another 512mb of DDR 400 Rahm. I also had my computer's Windows XP Pro reinstalled because of a nasty little bit of programming called "Netdaemon" that wormed itself into my computer. Finally I bought another hard drive this one being a Maxtor IDE Hard Drive with a capacity of 200 GB. I already had a Maxtor Sata 160 GB hard drive.

I feel I was being greedy not being satisfied with what I already had, which never had any Bios Problems, now I got major Bios Problems. I can't even get into Windows XP. I kind of thought it would be neat to have one drive dedicated to just recording to. The technician where I bought the parts has it set up that the C Drive is the IDE Drive and the drive for recording video to is called Video/E Drive. Now when I got it home the other day, I couldn't get into Windows XP Pro either, it said Boot Disc Failure, Insert System Disk and press Enter.

The technician dropped in on his way home and kindly fixed things, some settings in the Bios. Everything was working hunky dorky, until I shut the computer off the next day for a couple of hours and whatever occured I don't no, but it is as if the Bios forgot its instructions. This is what I get now:

Sec. Slave Disk: None
Pri. Slave Disk HDD S.M.A.R.T. capability...disabled

Verifying DMI Pool Data Update Success
Boot from CD:
Disc Boot failure, Insert System Disk and press enter


I can't get beyond this unless I start fooling with the Bios, and I haven't got a clue so I am scared to attempt.

I tried phoning around for some free advice, and the only kernel of info I could glean was perhaps there is a battery in my computer that is run low or a possible short somewhere.

The technician I think is out of town, so I don't if I will reach him before Monday, If someone could perhaps give me a clue to what to tell the technician to look for or to perhaps educate us both on the intricasies of trying to getting IDE and SATA to get along and be good pals working together for my benifit I would appreciate it.

I am hoping I haven't somehow incorparated some kind of virus, spyware or malware back on my system. Currently I use Luke Filewalker as my Anti Virus, well it's official name in AntiVir/Personal Edition. I have been told by a local merchant who sells and works on computers that Norton is the only reliable Anti Virus Program out on the market and all others fall short.

Well I better go. Please help me get a clue to what is going on. When I was working in Windows XP I was able to do alot of things on the C Drive while the E Drive was recording and not a frame was dropped. I surfed the net, dragged stuff onto my computer from a InCD DVD+RW Disk, ect.
It was really quite nice, and I noticed a modest inrease in speed when I working with Womble editing a file and resaving it. I am now curious if I can make a DVD a little faster or not. It was neat as well not having that "run dll as an app thing not pop up that pestered me at start up" not there anymore since he wiped everything out and re-installed things.

Any advice is greatly appreciated.


Tom Saurus

[Richard_G]

It sounds as though your bios has lost it's settings for some reason. If you only have the two drives, the IDE one should be set as master on the primary and you should boot from that. Quite why you are showing a primary slave but no master, I have no idea. But, you have had it set up (sic) by a technician.......

Go into bios (usually by hitting Del during start up) and on the first page it should show you what drives it has detected. There should also be an auto detect hard drives function in there too. Run that and see if it detects both drives. If it does, save and exit and you should be OK.

If not, you have a more serious problem and you'd need to give much more information that you have.

[Tom Saurus]

Richard G. Thanks, I will try to do that, though I am scared I might somehow screw things up by even looking at the Bios. I am not all that smart. What does "(sic)" mean? I have often wondered what (sic) means. I think it might me sarcastic, am I anywhere close to being right.

[Richard_G]

You can't do any permanent damage in the bios, if you get the settings totally wrong, it just won't work. But as it doesn't at the moment, you've nothing to lose! It can only get better......

I can't remember exactly what sic is short for, but it isn't complimentary. Technician = Expert = ex (former, used to be, has been) + spurt (a drip under pressure). Most computer 'technicians' know how to put a machine together and it works. If it doesn't, they don't have a clue. I say most, because there must be the odd one out there somewhere but I've never found him! You'll find that the people that know the most are the ones that have been there and worked it out for themselves, rather than the ones that have done a course or read a book and get stuck if something doesn't do what they expect it to.

In much the same way as you'll often get a more sensible answer asking about problems with video on here rather than from the helpdesk of the software company. Most people on here have learnt by trial and error and lots of time, they have been there before. Someone who works for a software publisher knows how something should work but don't know why it doesn't when it doesn't.

[rkr1958]

Tom,

When you boot there is sometimes a screen that tells you to hit "F1" (for example) to enter the bios. It's "F1" on my computer but it may be different for yours. Anyway when you get to bios there should be a page that will allow you to checkout and/or configure your boot devices and order. For example, 1st Boot from CD/DVD drive, 2nd boot from floppy drive, 3rd boot from harddrive. Basicly these instructions tell which drive and in which order to boot from. [One other thing ... make sure when you restart you do NOT have any non-bootable floppy in your floppy drive. If you do, remove it. You'd get a non-bootable disc error is you leave it in.] Now back to the bios ... make sure that the harddrive that contains your O/S is listed as the first harddrive from which your system is going to boot. If not, change the setting to that in your bios, exit/save and reboot.

[Tom Saurus]

I went into the Auto Detect Hard Drive and it read as follows:

IDE Channel 0 Master (Auto)
Access Mode

Capacity 0mb

What else do I do?

[jimmalenko]

It sounds to me like your computer is configured to "Boot from CD" (which you do initially when installing/reinstalling WinXP, but I normally change back afterwards). In my BIOS it's under advanced, then First Boot Device, Second Boot Device, etc etc. I'd try changing your first Boot Device to IDE-0. Is there any chance that you have a CD or DVD in your CD-ROM/DVD-ROM/CD-RW/DVDRW ?

[rkr1958]

IDE Channel 0 Master (Auto)
Access Mode

Capacity 0mb

"Capacity 0mb" seems to indicate that the bios is not configured to boot from the drive that contains your O/S. There should be a screen in the bios that shows what drives are detected. Does that screen list your IDE drive (the one with the O/S on it)? If so, write the details down (e.g., IDE Channel X (yyyy)). Go back to the boot configuration screen and change "IDE Channel 0 Master (Auto)" to what you recorded for the O/S drive. Save & Exit, reboot and let's know what happens. Good Luck.

[Tom Saurus]

Richard G., rhr1958 & jimmalenko:

Thanks for the advice, it was kind of you to respond to my questions. The technician called and he said that he would fix my computer and I don't have to pay for that. He is leaning toward their being a weak battery. It was working fine for awhile, and then all this. So hopefully on Monday, he will find out where the problem lies. He told me there is not that much of an advantage to having a SATA Drive, so I may exchange it for another IDE and have two IDE drives. I am kind of hoping that the SATA and IDE can work together though; just in case SATA is a better drive to capture video to. He is going to do some heavy duty hardware tests and thoroughly test the IDE Hard Drive to make sure it isn't a faulty one. I am so spoiled now, I like recording to the hard drive it is so much sharper than vhs tapes, especially while recording with the S-Video Cable. Thanks once again.

I will post an update once things get sorted out.

[rkr1958]

Tom,

You should have no problem making an IDE and SATA drive work together. I have two internal IDE drives (120-GB & 250-GB) and two internal SATA drives (a pair of 160-GB configured in RAID-0 (320-GB total)). My 120-GB drive is partitioned into 15-GB (O/S & Applications), 10-GB hidden for restore points & the rest for data. I capture and encode to my 320-SATA RAID-0 & 250-GB IDE drives. I have absolutely no problems with all these internal drives. I also have an external 60-GB firewire drive. This gives my 750-GB total hard-drive. My motto is that you can never have enough harddrive space.

Your technician should have no problems getting your two drives and computer to work as it should. And your correct in having a dedicated second harddrive for video work. This just makes things much better in general.

Anyway, good luck and let's know how things turn out.

[pfh]

It can't find the primary boot drive- thus it goes to the next in line or the 3rd.

Maybe a cable came loose.

Worst case- the drive has crapped out!

[Bjs]

Next person to post such a post should also include the motherboards id , and maybe even a link to the motherboard page at the manufacturers website ...

If you do , I could have told you how to fix it without all these other posters saying " on my system its hit f1" , how lame ....

There is some 20 odd diferent ways I know of that gets a pc into the bios , as not all manufacturers follow the same rules , I personally wished they get this act sorted as it would make sorting pcs out much faster .

So if you continue to have this issue , let me know what the motherboard is , an maybe a direct link to the page of you actual motherboard would be handy ...and I'll be able to sort it out for you , once and for all ...

[pfh]

thats nice but if it's oem (most likely) and someone that is not comfortable installing a hard drive you expect them to find the MoBo id?

[guns1inger]

A little english lesson for you :

(sic) is used when quoting another source (person, post etc), to indicate that the spelling or grammatical errors are from the original post, not introduced by the person doing the quoting.

[Tom Saurus]

rhr1958: Perhaps this RAID configuration that you wrote about is the "Mirroring" that my technician is talking about. He said essentially that for the sake of some speeds and perhaps a more stable system, one writes the exact same data to two or more different drives. I wonder if it is really worth it.

Bjs:
The motherboard that my computer has is a MS-6743 according to the manual that I have.

pfh: The first time I brought it home the computer said something about a cable, the technician checked it, and no cable was loose. Since he worked on, the computer hasn't displayed anything about a cable. What all that means I don't know.

gunslinger: Thanks for the definition of (sic). Due to all my spelling and grammatical errors, if I use that (sic) in any of my posts I am going to be kind of a jerk criticizing other peoples errors when I have so many of my own.

Thanks to everyone for the advice. The technician has been quite kind to me, with these computer problems. If we can't get the bugs out of having two different drives in the computer he has given me an option of exchanging the SATA Drive for another IDE Drive. Would I notice a real slow down in preformance if I had no SATA at all?

[rkr1958]

rhr1958: Perhaps this RAID configuration that you wrote about is the "Mirroring" that my technician is talking about. He said essentially that for the sake of some speeds and perhaps a more stable system, one writes the exact same data to two or more different drives. I wonder if it is really worth it.

Raid 1 is mirroring in which the same data is written to both drives, hence they are mirrors or exact copies of each other. Thus if one drive fails then you still have the data. The downside is that for a pair of 160-GB drives (for example) you only get 160-GB space. I'm running Raid-0, which is stripping. In this case a file is stripped to two drives. Raid-0 is fast because the file is written across two drives at the same time. Thus, my pair of 160-GB SATA drives looks like a single 320-GB drive. The downside, if one drive fails you lose everything.

By the way, RAID-0, or even RAID-1, in my opinion is uncessary. I did it because my Motherboard supports it and I could. It's fast ...

... he has given me an option of exchanging the SATA Drive for another IDE drive. Would I notice a real slow down in preformance if I had no SATA at all?

No. The IDE should be just fine assuming you're exchaning an SATA150 for a IDE ATA100 or ATA133.

[rkr1958]

Next person to post such a post should also include the motherboards id , and maybe even a link to the motherboard page at the manufacturers website ...

If you do , I could have told you how to fix it without all these other posters saying " on my system its hit f1" , how lame ....

When you boot there is sometimes a screen that tells you to hit "F1" (for example) to enter the bios. It's "F1" on my computer but it may be different for yours.

This isn't a pay site and advice given here is free. If you want to go the extra mile, look up the Motherboard Specs, and hand-hold someone through troubleshooting their problem you are free to do that.

While there may be a lot of chaff and little wheat in the responses we are trying to help. To take exception and disagree with a technical part of a post is appropriate and is what this site is about. To criticize people and calling them "lame" for legitimately trying to help is not.

And by the way. This site has been great for me for troubleshooting, solving problems and learning. What I found personally to be true is that I'm NOT usually given the exact solution. I find the responses to my and others ususally stimulate other ideas that I go off an investiage and this is what leads to the solution.

This is a learning site and it usually requires participation, and some trial and error, on the part of the poster to work through their issue.

[Tom Saurus]

I got a phone call today from the technician. He told me to make sure the computer is uplugged from the hydro. I was then to uplug the cable going to the motherboard that is connected to the SATA Drive. Then I was to boot up the computer and let him know what happened.

Well it went right into Windows XP, with no problem. For whatever reason my motherboard doesn't like a mixture of IDE and SATA. He is going to get me an IDE Hard Drive to take the place of the SATA and replace it.

So I will update you when that is completed. If there isn't any real advantage to having SATA, I won't miss it. Thanks for all the advice I have received, it is greatly appreciated.

[Tom Saurus]

My computer is up and running. The technician installed another IDE Drive in to take the place of the SATA. Everything seems to be working fine. Thanks for all the advice.

[RabidDog]

The Hydro? That sounds like a nice warm bath if you ask me

[Nelson37]

Apparently "hydro" means electricity, must be a dam nearby.

Now why would you exchange a newer-technology, higher-performance hard drive for an older, slower one?

No battery is required for the BIOS to detect a hard drive. This happens automatically, every time you boot, no retention of information is necessary. Strike one.

It apparently worked at least once, this "technician" had a newly installed boot drive which failed to recognize or boot, changed a BIOS setting, and only booted one time and did not do multiple power off reboots? Strike two.

And now because he can't figure out how to make a Sata work with an IDE on the same board, he is going to exchange the Sata for an IDE drive??? Strike three, you're OUTA HERE.

Just for extra credit, Mirroring SLOWS DOWN DRIVE PERFORMANCE, it does NOT yield a speed increase.

All this, plus recalling your previous posts and assuming they concern the same technician, strongly indicates that this clown has no clue and you should find a different technician.

Some boards are a little bit finicky about IDE and SATA together, there is ALWAYS a setting which will alow this to work. Sometimes only certain Sata connectors will work together with IDE. 5 minutes and a couple of reboots would resolve this.

THE INDIVIDUAL YOU ARE DEALING WITH IS A FLAMING DUMBASS WHO SHOULD NOT BE ALLOWED TO HANDLE A #2 PHILLIPS.

[freebird73717]

Guys... Why are you bumping a 5 year old thread?

THE INDIVIDUAL YOU ARE DEALING WITH IS A FLAMING DUMBASS WHO SHOULD NOT BE ALLOWED TO HANDLE A #2 PHILLIPS

{in my best Larry the Cable Guy impression} I don't care who ya are, That's funny right there. !

[zoobie]

well, that's what Rabid Dogs do, evidently

[RabidDog]

It was to get more attention for my newer thread... sorry!