Mixed drives on a SATA mobo.

bingo_bango

Hoping someone has got an idea for this, as I'm not entirely sure where to go next.

I have a Maxtor 320Gb HDD (IDE) from on old PC. It contains a number of photos and files I'd like to recover.

I have recently built a new PC which has an SSD as the main boot drive (Win 7 Ultimate 64bit), with a 640Gb SATA drive for storage (partitioned in 2 from when I used it as my main HDD in my previous PC). The SSD and the 640Gb drive are both fine, and happily working away on the new mobo.

I bought a converter for the IDE drive and plugged it in. I know it has an OS on it (XP 32bit) and I have added a jumper for master as this appears to be the conventional wisdom around the net (although I have also tried this with the jumper set to cable select, and with no jumper at all). The IDE drive shows up in the BIOS.

On booting with all drives connected, the 'starting Windows' screen appears but then hangs. It appears that the system is trying to boot from the IDE drive even though I have set the correct boot order in the BIOS. I believe this to be the case because without the IDE drive plugged in, the boot process is normal.

The mobo allows hot plugging to be enabled for the individual SATA ports, but if I try this using the IDE drive and convertor, the drive is not recognised in Windows and does not show up in the drive list.

Anyone got any ideas? Other than borrowing an old IDE machine and transferring using memory cards or similar which means I can't use the drive (I'd like to utilise it for extra storage if possible).

googler

External USB caddy for £10 or so, then copy/paste.

bingo_bango

Considered a caddy, but I'd like to keep the drive out of the way (for reasons of space!). Hence trying to figure out how to stop it trying to boot XP from the old drive.

Cycrow

You could try accessing your boot menu and choosing the correct drive from there.

its usually something like F11, but can change between different BIOS's

Essentially the boot menu will let you choose the specific drive to boot from overriding the boot order set in the BIOS.

have you also tried to go into safe mode when it boots the other windows ?

it is also possible that it is booting the correct version of windows, but the hang is happening when its checking all the other drives connected and doesn't like the IDE drive

bingo_bango

I have tried the override option, but get the same result as above.

Safe mode is one avenue I haven't explored.

It is of course a possibility that the BIOS/mobo just doesn't like the IDE drive and therefore blocking the full windows start.

Also just occurred to me that I haven't tried to boot XP first. that might (a very big caveat to that might!) allow me to transfer the files I need and format the drive to get rid of the XP install.

Won't be back in the house until later, so will explore those options then.

OGR

Are you sure it is trying to boot from the IDE drive? You just say you assume it is because of the hang. Are both drives running the same version of Windows?

It could simply be that Windows is halting on boot when it tries to access or load drivers for the IDE drive.

If the versions of Windows are different then whichever boot screen you get shows which drive it is booting from.

EDIT: I notice you say Windows XP above and I assume the SSD is running 7 or 8 so if you get the 7 or 8 boot logo then it isn't trying to boot from the IDE drive at all.

bingo_bango

It appears to be the Win7 boot screen (can't remember what XP looks like!) Which is why I can't understand the hang.

poppellerant

Sounds as though the adaptor or drive is setup incorrectly. What is the make and model of the adaptor? I'm pretty sure the drive should be set as a master, but I seem to remember that not all IDE drives work well with adaptors.

As a last resort, I'd try a USB adaptor.

bingo_bango

Having spent more time exploring this issue....

I basically got no further. I capitulated and bought a USB caddy which works fine.

I did however do some more research beforehand and it appears that not all SATA mobo's are created equal. Some will support IDE drives (converted or not) and others won't. Not sure if it's age related, but it does seem that there were transitional provisions (IDE to SATA) built in by the mobo manufacturers which now appear to have been quietly killed off. It also appears that some Western Digital drives can create problems (not that my HDD was WD, but just for completeness).

So thanks all, but this one goes down in the 'I had to give up' column.