My second hard drive causes disk boot failure


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My problem is as follows: When I boot up my computer with with my primary hard drive (containing my OS) connected, it boots fine. When I connect a second hard drive (which just contains data), it show "DISK BOOT FAILURE, INSERT SYSTEM DISK AND PRESS ENTER". I've used both hard drives with each other for the past year or so with no problem, but when I turned on my computer this morning, the problem occurred. Both hard drives are SATA and it doesn't look like there is any way to change a jumper to indicate slave/master drives like there is with ATA.

any ideas as to what could be causing this is appreciated. thanks.

ok I swapped cables around and .... nothing.

One thing that I noticed this time is that the hard drive makes a sound when its plugged in. Its kind of like a chirping sound. This made me nervous that the hard drive might have failed or might be failing. To try to save it, I booted up spinrite. Unfortunately it wasn't able to detect the hard drive (I unplugged my working hard drive and all that it detected was my floppy drive).

Did this hard drive fail? or is there still hope.

your bios is probably putting that drive you insert first in your list of drives to boot with.. you need to go into the bios and change the drive order around to make sure the drive with your boot data is the drive at the top of the list, and not your data drive that you insert.

Edit: Nevermind. Should have read more of the replies. Strange that both drives don't show up. In my bios there are two seperate screens.. once lists boot device priority (drive, CD-rom, etc) the other lists drive priority. Make sure you checked both. If you are on the screen with boot device priority, the drive that is at the top of the list will be the only one listed there. To get a different drive there, you have to swap around the drives in the drive order section.

I think what you need to do 1st is either get a USB/SATA HDD adaptor or a HDD Docking station. Run Hiren's or Bart's PE, or any other mini-XP environment and get your valuable data off of it.

Worry about the other stuff AFTER you have your data backed-up.

As far as an answer to your question, have you tried every SATA port ? Also, have you reset your BIOS to default or checked for a BIOS update ?

I think you need to:

1.) Get your personal data off of the drive (music, emails, pics, movies, docs)

2.) See if there is a BIOS update, if so - flash it

3.) Set BIOS to default

4.) Try other SATA ports

5.) Get a new mobo and possibly a new HDD ;(

CAPSLOCKISAWESOMEBTW

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