Calling All Geeks!

[SmokeyDave]

Your mobo just auto detects drives on the POST, unplugging isn't a problem.

Good luck amigo!

[Batler]

Nothing in the bios has changed has it? The hdd settings are still SATA? And your os drive boots first?

[cigarmo]

hi you have the bios setting for the sata set to behave in ide mode, press the del or f1 normally key to get in the bios and check the sata mode, it will sometimes be called compatiablity mode. note with many systems if you change this setting when windows is already installed the system will not boot.

hope that helps

[TJCoro]

Here We Go....

All drives are set to SATA, so that's should not be the problem.

There is, however, a new version of the bios for my MSI mobo.

I guess I should install, but I seem to remember folks reporting issues when updating their bios.

El P

[SmokeyDave]

As the BIOS controls your mobo, when you flash it to do the update there is a slim chance you could have a power-cut etc to interrupt and brick your mobo. Most boards come with an easy flash updater now, you can even do it from desktop.
If the worst does happen you can buy a new BIOS chip and resurrect it.

[TJCoro]

So se?or smokey, you're saying go ahead with the update?

BTW, I'm using MSI Live Update to identify and update the new firmware/bios.

El P


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[SmokeyDave]

I've been digging around a bit more, is the Primary Slave drive you mention also the drive you thought was on its way out and bad?

It seems when the PC boots and the POST checks for drives that some HDD's take a long time to start up and the system gets fed up of waiting and returns an error. Of course this could mean your HDD has bad sectors on and that is causing the prolonged startup.

Does the HDD show in windows ok? Can you access it via Disk Management?

Personally as this is a new build I would flash the BIOS anyway

[TJCoro]

Keep Smiffing!

It appears that "primary slave drive" is actually the 3rd sata drive. I forget how I determined that, but think I was in the bios.

I have no problem accessing any of the disks. All five internal disks and one external disk are classified as "healthy" in disk management.

I tried to flash the current bios version with the so-called "on-line" version with MSI Live Update, but it won't update.

I think I'll go back into the bios and sniff around a bit.

El P

[Wid3y]

As the BIOS controls your mobo, when you flash it to do the update there is a slim chance you could have a power-cut etc to interrupt and brick your mobo. Most boards come with an easy flash updater now, you can even do it from desktop.
If the worst does happen you can buy a new BIOS chip and resurrect it.

As per most MoBos have a backup bios battery which can be easily reset by removing the little watch battery. Only do this if the bios update fails!

[TJCoro]

Bad Boy Disk!

Another simple one would be to unplug SATA devices and then add them one by one back into the configuration, see if it happens only when all are plugged in.

This was a good idea muchacho.

Applying this method, I found that Drive 2 (with the primary Drive as 0) is the bag egg.

When this drive is unplugged, the PC boots up normally. I will probably replace it with a 3tb Seagate Barracude or Western Digital Red.

I still plan to update the bios if I can ever get it to work correctly. (The update downloads successfully, but AMI Firmware Update Utility reports an error when trying to install the driver.)

Good work, amigos!


Perro, el Perro