Bootit NG unable to work with Hard Drive

Hello,

I hope this is posted in the right place and I am hoping I can get some help from the Bootit NG experts.

I created a Boot CD for partition work of Bootit NG. The CD works great and loads just fine. When the Partition Work window appears, it lists my 4 hard drives and CD drive as normal. However, I find that when I select the radio button beside 'HD2', it is unable to work with that disk. When I select the radio button, nothing happens and then a message appears in the top-left corner of the screen that says "Press <ENTER> to reboot...". Pressing the Enter key reboots my system, however, I am still unable to work with HD2.

About my system:

I have 3 internal hard drives: HD0: 150 GB Western Digital Raptor SATA. HD1: 250 GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 SATAII, HD2: 400 GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 SATAII.

I also have 1 external hard drive (HD3): 750 GB Seagate Free Agent Pro connected thry eSATA. There is no problem accessing HD0, HD1, and HD3. I am able to partition and image these drives and paritions perfectly. Just HD2 is the only drive having trouble.

The internal SATA drives are connected to an Asus A8N32-SLI Deluxe motherboard on the nForce 4 SATA connectors with the latest BIOS. The External eSATA drive is connected to the eSATA port on the motherboard which is controlled by a Silicon Image Sil3132 SATA controller.

Does anyone have any suggestions?

 

Sorry I dont know why you cant work with HD2. I use BING for both partitioning and images, but I am not an expert. Im sure someone else here can help you. If not, you could search their knowledgebase:

http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/support.html

or contact support@terabyteunlimited.com

They also have a newsgroup: http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/webnews.html

I just read in the newsgroup that someone with similar problem was told to ensure that BIOS is setup to detect that drive.

Good luck And please let us know if you find a solution to your problem or not.

 

francisw19,

Are the three internal HDs setup the same in the BIOS?

As a test, could you try connecting HD2 to the HD0 SATA port. Does it then work in BING?

 

Thanks for the replys guys!

I have contacted support and they are looking into this as well. So, hopefully they can think of some things too.

In the BIOS all three hard drives have the same settings applie (which are just the default BIOS settings). The settings for HD0, HD1, and HD2 are as follows:

LBA/Large Mode: Auto
Block (Multi-Sector Transfer) M: Auto
PIO Mode: Auto
DMA Mode: Auto
SMART Monitoring: Auto
32-bit Data Transfer: Disabled


Under HD2 (400GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.10), the BIOS detects the following information about the drive:

LBA/Large Mode: Supported
Block (Multi-Sector Transfer) M: 16 Sectors
PIO Mode: 4
DMA Mode: Ultra DMA-6
SMART Monitoring: Supported

Also, I have connected the 400 GB 7200.10 in quesiton to each of the SATA ports (SATA_1, SATA_2, SATA_3, and SATA_4) and still have the same results. I have also connected the 400 GB 7200.10 as the only drive on SATA_1 and still have the same problem.

Could this be a problem with the settings in the BIOS?


I should also mention: I tried Acronis True Image and found that the boot CD was unable to load. It was stuck at a black screen with the text: 'Starting Acronis Loader...' and would not go any further. However, if I unplugged the 400 GB Seagate SATA drive, then the Acronis CD would load with no problems! As soon as I plugged it back in, then it would not load.

Perhaps this is just an issue with the drive?

I'm not sure where to go from here...this 400 GB drive works fine other wise. It's always there in Windows, the BIOS can see it fine. With two different boot CD's (BING and Acronis), it appears that this drive is giving them both a fit.

I appreciate the help and suggestions so far...can anyone think of anything else to try?

Thanks

 

Weird.

Keep us informed.