Can a E-1400SFF boot from a Sata drive ?

Yet another question to be answered. Can a Gateway E-1400 Small Form Factor
desktop be booted from a Sata drive. I have a PCI SATA controller with a
160GB hard drive attached to it. It is a western Digital. Sata drive. It
is formatted as NTFS. I ran WD Data Lifegaurd from the CD with Windows 2000
Pro installed on the puny Maxtor 6 GB IDE drive. It successfully copied the
OS drive image to the connected SATA drive, but when I shut down the
computer and disconnected the internal drive the following happens. It
matters not if the drive is connected to 0 or 1 on the Sata controller. As
the system initializes it sees the WD 149GB hard drive on either 0 or 1
whichever it is connected to but then the system bootup fails to recognize
it is even there . Boot priority is set to CDrom as first and HD as second
and floppy as third. The follwing message appears "Can't find NTLDR" and the
floppy light flashes. It says hit any key to restart and then the same
message appears and the floppy light flashes. Its funny that booting from
the internal IDE drive and loading Windows 2000 pro that the SATA drive is
recognized and can be read from or written, yet it cannot be booted up if it
is set as the only drive on the system with the entire os there. What am I
missing ? Please enlightne me if you can.

On Sat, 08 Dec 2007 21:04:15 -0600, john orwen wrote:

> Yet another question to be answered. Can a Gateway E-1400 Small Form
> Factor desktop be booted from a Sata drive. I have a PCI SATA
> controller with a 160GB hard drive attached to it. It is a western
> Digital. Sata drive. It is formatted as NTFS. I ran WD Data Lifegaurd
> from the CD with Windows 2000 Pro installed on the puny Maxtor 6 GB IDE
> drive. It successfully copied the OS drive image to the connected SATA
> drive, but when I shut down the computer and disconnected the internal
> drive the following happens. It matters not if the drive is connected to
> 0 or 1 on the Sata controller. As the system initializes it sees the WD
> 149GB hard drive on either 0 or 1 whichever it is connected to but then
> the system bootup fails to recognize it is even there . Boot priority
> is set to CDrom as first and HD as second and floppy as third. The
> follwing message appears "Can't find NTLDR" and the floppy light
> flashes. It says hit any key to restart and then the same message
> appears and the floppy light flashes. Its funny that booting from the
> internal IDE drive and loading Windows 2000 pro that the SATA drive is
> recognized and can be read from or written, yet it cannot be booted up
> if it is set as the only drive on the system with the entire os there.
> What am I missing ? Please enlightne me if you can.

* * *
john

I would believe you do not have the software loaded or the bios does not
recognized the controler hardware for booting purposes. Remember the
bios needs to know to boot from the controller card.

With most inexpensive PCI controller cards there is software that needs
to be installed to set the bios in the PCI Card (raid), and then you need
to add software for the computer's bios, unless you have spent a
considerable amount of money for the hardware that has roms and
switches for this purpose.

But the age of the computer, I have forgotten the tricks, as my last
Promise card installation was a while ago...

Trying to remember, but believe during the instalation of win2k, it asks
you if you are going to use a third party booting system... But there
were ways to jury rig the controller after the operating system was
installed... It was always troublsome, and I would do a new operating
system insytalation after setting up the controlers Bios (raid settings).

What you have done duplicating the IDE boot instalation is not going to
work, I would think... What does the Controller card support indicate?


Review of e-1400 -
www.ciao.co.uk/Gateway_E_1400__5358682

JR the postman

I gave up trying to get it to work. I put an 80 GB hard drive in an
external USB 2.0 case and booted the system up. It immediately recognized
it and formatted it NTFS. I then used my WD CD and transferred the drive
image from the 6 GB drive to the 80 GB drive. I rebooted the system and
went into Administrated computer managment and made the partition a primary
active partition. I rebooted the system again and it was automatically
recognized. I then shut the system down and removed the 80 GB drive from
the external USB enclouser and removed the 6 GB drive from the IDE cable and
replaced it with the 80 GB drive with the jumper on the drive set to MASTER.
I booted up the system and bingo, windows 2000 loaded and stated it had
found new hardware 80 GB drive. It stated it had installed the necessary
hardware and to reboot the computer. I rebooted the computer and now
everything is running just fine with a much larger hard drive than before.
I really wanted the 160 GB drive but when I bought it from the computer
store I forgot to ask if it was IDE or SATA. It of course was not
returnable so I bought an inexpensive SATA controller that came with no
drivers CD. The computer store said that WIndows 2000 Pro would recognize
it and automatically install the necessary drivers, which it did but it
wouldn't boot from the drive. I have the latest bios flashed so I guess I
never would get a large SATA hard drive to work. If I had just bought an
IDE 160 GB hard drive it would have worked but of course windows 2000 Pro
would only recognize it as 137 GB and with the latest SP installed it would
ask if you want to install LBA which after doing so and rebooting it would
recognize as full size. So I guess I am hyappy for now. Thanks for
responding, I was beginning to think that no one was going to. It is nice
to know that there is help if a person just asks for it. Someone has always
"been there- done that !".

"Postman Delivers" <JR_the_postman@xyzahoo.com> wrote in message
news:y9F7j.2711$E01.1149@newsfe22.lga...
> On Sat, 08 Dec 2007 21:04:15 -0600, john orwen wrote:
>
>> Yet another question to be answered. Can a Gateway E-1400 Small Form
>> Factor desktop be booted from a Sata drive. I have a PCI SATA
>> controller with a 160GB hard drive attached to it. It is a western
>> Digital. Sata drive. It is formatted as NTFS. I ran WD Data Lifegaurd
>> from the CD with Windows 2000 Pro installed on the puny Maxtor 6 GB IDE
>> drive. It successfully copied the OS drive image to the connected SATA
>> drive, but when I shut down the computer and disconnected the internal
>> drive the following happens. It matters not if the drive is connected to
>> 0 or 1 on the Sata controller. As the system initializes it sees the WD
>> 149GB hard drive on either 0 or 1 whichever it is connected to but then
>> the system bootup fails to recognize it is even there . Boot priority
>> is set to CDrom as first and HD as second and floppy as third. The
>> follwing message appears "Can't find NTLDR" and the floppy light
>> flashes. It says hit any key to restart and then the same message
>> appears and the floppy light flashes. Its funny that booting from the
>> internal IDE drive and loading Windows 2000 pro that the SATA drive is
>> recognized and can be read from or written, yet it cannot be booted up
>> if it is set as the only drive on the system with the entire os there.
>> What am I missing ? Please enlightne me if you can.
>
> * * *
> john
>
> I would believe you do not have the software loaded or the bios does not
> recognized the controler hardware for booting purposes. Remember the
> bios needs to know to boot from the controller card.
>
> With most inexpensive PCI controller cards there is software that needs
> to be installed to set the bios in the PCI Card (raid), and then you need
> to add software for the computer's bios, unless you have spent a
> considerable amount of money for the hardware that has roms and
> switches for this purpose.
>
> But the age of the computer, I have forgotten the tricks, as my last
> Promise card installation was a while ago...
>
> Trying to remember, but believe during the instalation of win2k, it asks
> you if you are going to use a third party booting system... But there
> were ways to jury rig the controller after the operating system was
> installed... It was always troublsome, and I would do a new operating
> system insytalation after setting up the controlers Bios (raid settings).
>
> What you have done duplicating the IDE boot instalation is not going to
> work, I would think... What does the Controller card support indicate?
>
>
> Review of e-1400 -
> www.ciao.co.uk/Gateway_E_1400__5358682
>
> JR the postman
>
>
>