Replacing eIDE Boot drive with SATA - OS setup says "NTLDR is Missing" BIOS issues?

Optiplex GX270 512/p4 2.6

HD crashed. I also have a EIDE 80g data drive.

I bought a wd 160g sata to replace the maxtor 60g diamondmax eide that
crashed.

Ran the wd life drive tools to format and partition (137gig for
windows 2000 - apparently there is a windows fix to recognize the
whole drive once you are up and running.)

Using windows 2000 bootdisk1 (because I am doing a clean install from
the UPGRADE CD) - it stops when anylizing the Hard Drive configuration
and gives me NTLDR is Missing.

Though the bios setup recognizes the drive - the first message I get
is "Primary Drive 1 not found". I believe the problem is here...with
the bios.

Help Please! already wasted 4 days googling for answers.

PS FDisk recognizes the partition and says it is active, and Life
Drive saw it and formatted and partitioned - so it isn't completely
invisible. Also- Is there a problem having the IDE drive connected
during this process - and how should i cable and jump it so that the
SATA is primary?

"tenor20" <tenor20@equalvoices.net> wrote in message
news:1185475744.562417.219290@o61g2000hsh.googlegr oups.com...
> Optiplex GX270 512/p4 2.6
>
> HD crashed. I also have a EIDE 80g data drive.
>
> I bought a wd 160g sata to replace the maxtor 60g diamondmax eide that
> crashed.
>
> Ran the wd life drive tools to format and partition (137gig for
> windows 2000 - apparently there is a windows fix to recognize the
> whole drive once you are up and running.)
>
> Using windows 2000 bootdisk1 (because I am doing a clean install from
> the UPGRADE CD) - it stops when anylizing the Hard Drive configuration
> and gives me NTLDR is Missing.
>
> Though the bios setup recognizes the drive - the first message I get
> is "Primary Drive 1 not found". I believe the problem is here...with
> the bios.
>
> Help Please! already wasted 4 days googling for answers.
>
> PS FDisk recognizes the partition and says it is active, and Life
> Drive saw it and formatted and partitioned - so it isn't completely
> invisible. Also- Is there a problem having the IDE drive connected
> during this process - and how should i cable and jump it so that the
> SATA is primary?
>

perhaps the BIOS is looking for a SATA driver before it finds the
drive..........

I know nothing about 2000 but under XP with some MoBo BIOS's you have to
have the SATA drivers available on a floppy drive to be installed during the
installation of the OS.

If a motherboard requires XP drivers for SATA support, then drivers would be
needed for Windows 2000 as well.

My bet is that the Optiplex GX270 BIOS is old enough that drivers are required.
The newer motherboards with Intel 900-series chipsets do not need special SATA
drivers, as a rule... Ben Myers

On Thu, 26 Jul 2007 20:58:07 +0100, "Yes Baby" <2468@never2latebtinternet.com>
wrote:

>
>"tenor20" <tenor20@equalvoices.net> wrote in message
>news:1185475744.562417.219290@o61g2000hsh.googleg roups.com...
>> Optiplex GX270 512/p4 2.6
>>
>> HD crashed. I also have a EIDE 80g data drive.
>>
>> I bought a wd 160g sata to replace the maxtor 60g diamondmax eide that
>> crashed.
>>
>> Ran the wd life drive tools to format and partition (137gig for
>> windows 2000 - apparently there is a windows fix to recognize the
>> whole drive once you are up and running.)
>>
>> Using windows 2000 bootdisk1 (because I am doing a clean install from
>> the UPGRADE CD) - it stops when anylizing the Hard Drive configuration
>> and gives me NTLDR is Missing.
>>
>> Though the bios setup recognizes the drive - the first message I get
>> is "Primary Drive 1 not found". I believe the problem is here...with
>> the bios.
>>
>> Help Please! already wasted 4 days googling for answers.
>>
>> PS FDisk recognizes the partition and says it is active, and Life
>> Drive saw it and formatted and partitioned - so it isn't completely
>> invisible. Also- Is there a problem having the IDE drive connected
>> during this process - and how should i cable and jump it so that the
>> SATA is primary?
>>
>
>perhaps the BIOS is looking for a SATA driver before it finds the
>drive..........
>
>I know nothing about 2000 but under XP with some MoBo BIOS's you have to
>have the SATA drivers available on a floppy drive to be installed during the
>installation of the OS.
>

Thanks. I had this thought too - though when I checked the Dell
website for SATA drivers there wasn't anything listed. maybe I'll give
it a more thorough look.

Hi!

> Ran the wd life drive tools to format and partition (137gig for
> windows 2000 - apparently there is a windows fix to recognize the
> whole drive once you are up and running.)

The fix is a registry value, and is only valid on SP3 and higher for Windows
2000. You can change the value yourself if need be. There is a Microsoft KB
article on what to do if you're comfortable working on the Windows registry.

Let Windows Setup do the partitioning and configuration for the hard drive.
You might be surprised at the results. I installed the "Gold" (SP0) release
of Windows 2000 Pro on a Dimension 8300 and its 160GB Western Digital hard
drive. It let me partition and format all 160GB of it in one sitting. I've
never known why and adding a 200GB drive later (after the SP4 installation)
required that I throw the bit in the Windows registry to get anymore than
137GB of it to show up. Both drives crossed the limit, so why one worked and
the other not...I can't say.

> Though the bios setup recognizes the drive - the first message I get
> is "Primary Drive 1 not found". I believe the problem is here...with
> the bios.

Enter system setup and go into Drive Configuration. You'll see settings to
enable and disable not only the SATA drives, but also the PATA (IDE) ones.
Chances are good that one of the PATA device entries is set to "AUTO" and
says "unknown device". Turn the offending port off in Setup, restart and go
again. That should clear up the error.

> PS FDisk recognizes the partition and says it is active, and Life
> Drive saw it and formatted and partitioned

Let Windows Setup do the partitioning and formatting. Data Lifeguard tools
isn't perfect and may be doing something that Windows doesn't like.

> Also- Is there a problem having the IDE drive connected during this
process
> - and how should i cable and jump it so that the SATA is primary?

No, you shouldn't have any trouble with a connected IDE device. You can
remove it if you want to, but that is up to you.

SATA drives operate on a "one device per channel" principle. If you're sure
the drive is plugged into the right SATA channel on the motherboard (on my
Dim 8300 it is the topmost SATA connector) then you have done all you need
to do.

William

Hi!

> Thanks. I had this thought too - though when I checked the Dell
> website for SATA drivers there wasn't anything listed. maybe I'll give
> it a more thorough look.

I didn't need any SATA drivers for Windows 2000 Professional on my Dimension
8300. All the Intel *ATA controllers were recognized as such. Perhaps it
isn't the most performing setup, but it works to this day.

Most SATA controllers will emulate a conventional IDE controller and work
fine.

You can, at your own risk, download the Intel Chipset INF file update from
Intel (or Dell may offer it for your system). This will let your Intel SATA
controller be properly recognized. As far as I know, no better drivers are
available for Win2000/XP unless you have a RAID capable SATA controller and
are using it as such.

Updating to the latest BIOS would not be a bad idea if you haven't already.
Have the system on backup power and running from a cold start if you do.

William

> -----Original Message-----
> From: tenor20@gmail.com [mailto:tenor20@gmail.com]
> Posted At: Friday, July 27, 2007 12:20 AM
> Posted To: alt.sys.pc-clone.dell
> Conversation: Replacing eIDE Boot drive with SATA - OS setup says
> "NTLDR is Missing" BIOS issues?
> Subject: Re: Replacing eIDE Boot drive with SATA - OS setup says
"NTLDR
> is Missing" BIOS issues?
>
> Thanks. I had this thought too - though when I checked the Dell
> website for SATA drivers there wasn't anything listed. maybe I'll give
> it a more thorough look.

Might never me W2K drivers.

Thanks, William.This at least sent me down the right path. I
eventually got things running - not optimally - but running. I was
using a win 2k Upgrade disk - so booting from the cd wasn't an option.
I used a win98 boot disk and ran winnt from the i386 folder. I had
tried this before - but the drive wasn't showing up as large enough
for setup to run. I did 2 things - first I jumpered the sata drive to
150 - whether or not I needed to do this I don't know - because in the
same operation I partitioned and formatted from the win98 fdisk/format
in fat32. Then I let setup convert to NTFS - something I really didn't
want to do. I am now showing a 149 GB capacity on a 160 gb drive. Good
enough I guess.
Anyway - I've ordered a XP OEM disk from ebay and I plan on upgrading
as soon as it gets here. This will be my first OS that wasn't an
Upgrade disc since win95 - so at this early stage I may just wipe the
disk and start again if XP can format NTFS from the start.
I appreciate your help.




On Jul 27, 1:44 am, "William R. Walsh"
<newsgrou...@idontwantjunqueemail.walshcomptech.co m> wrote:
> Hi!
>
> > Thanks. I had this thought too - though when I checked the Dell
> > website for SATA drivers there wasn't anything listed. maybe I'll give
> > it a more thorough look.
>
> I didn't need any SATA drivers for Windows 2000 Professional on my Dimension
> 8300. All the Intel *ATA controllers were recognized as such. Perhaps it
> isn't the most performing setup, but it works to this day.
>
> Most SATA controllers will emulate a conventional IDE controller and work
> fine.
>
> You can, at your own risk, download the Intel Chipset INF file update from
> Intel (or Dell may offer it for your system). This will let your Intel SATA
> controller be properly recognized. As far as I know, no better drivers are
> available for Win2000/XP unless you have a RAID capable SATA controller and
> are using it as such.
>
> Updating to the latest BIOS would not be a bad idea if you haven't already.
> Have the system on backup power and running from a cold start if you do.
>
> William

Hi!

> Thanks, William.This at least sent me down the right path. I
> eventually got things running - not optimally - but running.
> I was using a win 2k Upgrade disk - so booting from the cd wasn't
> an option.

That's quite odd, as the upgrade discs are bootable. At least every Windows
2000 upgrade disc I ever came into contact with was startable. If you don't
have an OS installed at that point, you'll be asked to provide a valid CD
from a supported previous version of Windows.

Good luck with your next step. I'm glad to hear you got it working, even if
it wasn't really optimal.

William