Can't get SATA drive to boot - MSI K8NGM2-FID

Question

Mobo is MSI K8NGM2-FID.  I've had two IDE drives w/ XP and added a SATA II (WD7500AAKS) recently as a storage drive.  Now I'd like to make the SATA the boot drive, but after cloning it from the IDE boot drive it hasn't yet got far in the start up process (cloning with WD Tools, then again with Acronis).  I can't tell whether the problem is BIOS or Windows (XP) or ?  MSI Update says the BIOS is current and I set the SATA drive as the first HD in the boot order in Advanced BIOS features.
On start up, the computer runs through the BIOS sequence onscreen and then stops somewhere between the end of that and the Windows blue screen coming up, leaving a blank screen except a flashing cursor on the left. When I disconnect the two IDE drives as a test, the same thing happens. Then, with them still disconnected, I try booting from the XP CD and it gets to the point of checking the computer's current configuration and then the screen goes blank indefinitely. I would think it would either show the XP setup menu or give a message that's something is missing.
Does this sound like BIOS or Windows or ?  Is there anything else in BIOS that needs changing?  I've been told that IDE drive jumpers have no effect on SATA drives.  Is that true?  Thanks.
MSI K8NGM2-FID
Athlon 64 3000
2GB RAM
XP/SP2 current

Answer 1

Quote from: genegold on 29-January-08, 01:31:18
Good timing.  I'd like to add partitions to my new (cloned) SATA boot drive (C:), but wanted to back up first.  A problem and a question come up.  First, when I remount the old IDE drive as a second drive D:, even wiped clean, problems ensue.  Comodo wants to look for my firewall installation on D: and Acronis won't allow me to clone back, i.e., clone from the new drive to the old.
It's not really clear what you had before or what you have now in terms of HDDs: you had two IDE drives, C: & D: and one SATA as E:??; now you have a SATA boot drive.  Do you still have the 40GB IDE drive?  Did the clone over to the SATA automatically extend the old 160GB C: partition to 750GB?  Sorry but I've no idea how Acronis works.  "Wiped clean" is kinda vague - it could mean using the HDD mfr's utility to write zeroes to the entire surface... or just creating a new Extended partition containing a formatted(?) logical volume.  If that old IDE drive has a Primary partition it could still be marked as bootable, which you can check with BootitNG... and it's not a good idea to have a Primary partition on a 2nd drive.
Quote
Second, I assume that files are spread over the boot drive, not just grouped in the first 150GB, even if defragged.  In reducing the partition size - now 698GB - how does BootitNG know to make sure everything ends up in the first partition?  I read about this somewhere but don't see any mention in BootITNG.
Again, I don't know how you got to the situation of a 698GB partition on the SATA boot drive - it would have been better to clone to the same sized C: partition as the old 160GB drive and then use a tool like BootitNG to extend it to whatever size you want... then add new partitions.
No partition management software can guarantee a partition shrink will work - they can only shrink out unallocated space.  In that respect Windows XP Defrag is unreliable at both leaving unallocated space at the end of a partition AND at accurately reporting what is used and what is not.  In such a situation, without a better, more accurate, defragger I generally run defrag several times, with reboots in between until it "looks" like it's safe to shrink and do the shrink in steps, with checks and defrags again, in between.  Yes, it's a PITA.