[SOLVED] Booting from Asus U3S6 SATA Controller fails

Since the SATA controllers on my mainboard stopped working yesterday, I bought a Asus U3S6 Controller in the hope to work around the problem in this way. The drive is detected by the BIOS and GRUB is invoked correctly. However, when I try to load the kernel, I get following message:
Waiting 10 seconds for device /dev/sdb3 ...
ERROR: Unable to find root device '/dev/sdb3'.
You are being dropped to a recovery shell
In the recovery shell I cannot find any disk device under /dev/. Is this kind of booting supposed to work? When is the PCI controller actually detected and activated by the kernel?
Any help appreciated!
Last edited by smyp (2014-02-01 07:53:22)

I solved the problem.
I used used the chroot guide to modify my environment:
I had to add ahci to the list of modules in /etc/mkinitcpio.conf and rebuild it with
mkinitcpio -p linux
This will then load the AHCI module at boot time and enable the SATA devices.

Similar Messages

MSI P7N SLI Platinum Sata Controller failing?

I have this problem, at first I thought that my oldest hard disk drive was dead. What happened was the computer suddenly froze with constant buzzing coming from the speakers, as I restarted one of the hard disks was not in the list anymore, just as if I'd unplugged it except I didn't. I just thought the disk had died and removed it from the computer.
A few days later the computer froze lik this again, except now it didn't find the system disk and I couldn't start Windows. I was rather pissed since I had never before had a hard disk fail before I replaced it for a larger one and suddenly 2 disks were dead in a few days. But I didn't stop troubleshooting right there and tried switching the sata connectors and then suddenly all the disks were found again, but for some reason the Virus protection said all the system files were infected and qurantined them. I just had to restore to a restore point to fix it.
That worked for a few days, or until the last shut down when it was forever at "Turning off". After 30 minutes I just switched it off. Then the same thing with the booting. Then I disconnected the sata connectors from 2 of the 3 drives installed and left only the system disk connected. There have now 3 days passed without problems.
So I started asking around and trying to identify the cause and so far no one I have talked to has an idea, but I think that either the boards sata controller is failing or, what I consider unlikely but possible, that one of my hard drives is too big.
I have one 2TB disk connected and this seems to have started shortly after I installed it. I would blame it on a faulty hard disk but find that unlikely since it's randow wich of my hard drives stops working, if the newest one, the 2TB, would be faulty, that would be the one always dissapearing.
What makes me think that it might be a too large hdd is the fact that for the 1.3 BIOS update for this motherboard it is noted that support for 1000gb hard disks is added. This leads me to the possibility that a 2000gb hard disk is not supported by this motherboard.
Then I start brainstorming again, if that were the case, why does it appear normally in the bios and work properly in Windows as the full 2000gb it is, if it's not supported by the motherboard?
So basicly, my question is this: What could cause the computer losing hard disks at random and then finding them all again like nothing happened if I just open the case up and switch which sata connector is connected to which hard disk drive? But still work for numerous restarts and turn offs and then suddenly fail again?

Quote from: Mike on 28-March-10, 11:10:14
Check the cables. Make sure they are well seated. Also, you might try new SATA cables. Would you also post a complete list of your system...look at my signatures and read the >>Posting Guide<< as a guide.
I will try putting in new cables. The ones I have now are all secure and well seated, however I don't know if one of them is failing so I will replace them all to eliminate/confirm the theory.
I have added my system to my signature. I will post updates, however since it's random at what time this happens and in one case the computer was good for over a week, I can't be sure when I can confirm if this fixes things or not.

[SOLVED]Booting from external hard drive

Hi,
My SATA controller seems to be dead, I put my hard drive in an external USB bay. I would like to boot from it so that I still have exactly the same system running, but I'm facing a few issues with grub :
title Arch Linux
root (hd0,1)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz26 resume=/dev/sda4 root=/dev/sda2 ro quiet
initrd /boot/kernel26.img
I was surprised to see grub show up right after power on, and starting boot sequence. It then stopped complaining that /dev/sda2 was not found, and I was left in a minimal shell environment.
I tried replacing sda by sdb, since I was this was the new designator for my partitions since they are now mounted in USB, but with no luck.
Does anyone knows what do I need to change in the menu.lst, or elsewhere ?
Thanks in advance !
Last edited by willy9 (2010-01-20 16:17:38)

1. you need to rebuild your initramfs with adding the usb hook after 'autodetect'. You might need to chroot into your installation from ubuntu (for example) and then perform the rebuild.
2. add rootdelay as gusar suggested.
3. Hint: Due to you're booting from a external hard drive, I strongly recommend you to set labels to your drives. In this way, you can tell to /etc/fstab which are the proper partitions of your system avoiding the not-so-friendly-for-the-reader uuid string. This will help you to keep away udev messing with your drive's nodes.
in my case, I have a /etc/fstab which looks like this
LABEL="IOMEGA" / ext3 noatime,nodiratime 0 1
for extX filesystems, you can set its label with tune2fs -L label. For other filesystems, RTFM.
Last edited by kjon (2010-01-17 00:19:03)

Booting from an ExpressCard SATA card

I would like to know, out of any of the ExpressCard SATA cards available, do any of them support booting from an attached external drive? I want to be able to install Mac OS X and run it off of the attached drive. Thanks.

Any Firewire drive can be used to boot an Intel Mac (as well as any USB 2.0 drive.)
If you are concerned about speed but want to use a notebook drive, then you are pretty well off using FW400 or FW800 because the drives themselves are not fast enough to see any appreciable speed difference whether you use SATA on the ExpressCard/34 slot or Firewire. Just because the PCI/e bus is faster doesnt' accomplish a thing if the drives are maxed out on a FW400 port. Current notebook drives whether SATA or PATA are not fast enough to saturate a FW800 bus and rarely are faster than a FW400 bus.
I'm not sure why you feel there is indefinite information about bootable external drives and cloning software. The available information is quite definitive and specific. You seem to have a lot of information but don't quite understand it.
Intel Macs can boot from external Firewire or USB 2.0 drives. All Intel Macs require their hard drives be partitioned using the GUID partition scheme. You cannot boot an Intel Mac from a drive using the APM partition scheme. You cannot boot an Intel Mac using a PPC version of OS X and you cannot boot a PPC Mac using an Intel version of OS X. There are no problems with drives not spinning up quickly enough (I have no idea where you picked up that piece of misinformation.) Although the Oxford chipsets are the most popular in use with external drives, Macs can boot from external drives using other chipsets such as the Initio chipset.

Advice needed: Cannot boot from new external SATA drive/enclosure.

I replaced my two internal drives with 1Tb Seagate ST31000340AS drives.
I also bought a Mercury Elite Pro external enclosure from Other World Computing (OWCMEFW924AL2K) and populated that with two more of the same drives.
I have RAID disabled and am using Super Duper! to backup/clone my two internal drives to the two external drives. The drives are all working fine, as are all the possible connections (USB2, FW400 and FW800).
After a backup/clone, the Disk Info in Disk Utility shows the external system drive clone to be bootable (which it should be, as my previous external drives were). However, any attempt to boot from the drive via the launch-option key method or by changing the startup disk in the preference panes fails. With the latter I get a brief blinking folder question mark, then it reverts to booting from the internal system drive. With the former, I am not even shown the external drive as a boot volume.
So, what could possible going on here? All the hardware and cables check out, and in all the time I've used Super Duper! it has always created bootable backup drives.
I have tried both FW400 and FW800 connections for the boot, and nada.
I'm really at a loss to explain what might be going on.

After a lengthy live support session last night, and a further phone call to their tech support today, we both realized we had run out of ALL options to fix the problem. (There is nothing you could imagine that we didn't try).
In the end, OWC were kind enough to offer an overnight crosship of a replacement enclosure. I guess their suspicion is that there is a defect on the board in the enclosure. We'll see once I get the replacement...

[solved] booting from usb

Hello, I'm not sure if this post should go here but this board seemed the most "generic".
I have an acer aspire one with 8GB of SDD and no swap partition. That's ok for webbrowsing and some of the tasks I would like a netbook for. When I want to compile large programs boot from an arch installation in an external 500GB HD wich I use to bloat and install programs I will probably use once. This worked for me untill I upgraded to HD to 2.6.27 which I needed in order to use it in the AAO (hardware support). Now the USB won't boot.
I start the computer with the HD plugged and puch F12, choose to boot from the external drive and grub appear. Now no matter if I choose the first or second option it will start to boot but won't finish. It complains of the partition not existing. It suggest to add rootdelay=8 or greater to menu.lst, which I tried and doesn't work. When in ramfs$ I do
cd dev
echo *
there is no sdb4 which is the root partition nor any sdb? . When I boot my local install it boots ok and I can se /dev/sdb4.
Any idea?
Last edited by ore (2009-03-23 17:00:51)

when grub comes up hit "e"
then edit initrd line to read like this
initrd /boot/kernel26-fallback.img
if that doesnt work try boot of install cd
http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Boo … recovering
once in you id say you need to edit /etc/mkinitcpio.conf make sure usb is in hooks. if you have sata or ide drive inside notebook make sure usb hook is after sata or ide hook otherwise usb gets sda & internal drive gets sdb
http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Con … mkinitcpio
then run
mkinitcpio -g /boot/kernel26.img
reboot should do it

[Solved]Boot from USB HDD - Root device doesn't exist. Major/minor

My problem is that the kernel seems (or starts) to load, but then I get an error:
Root device 'UUID=1234 . . .' doesn't exist.
Attempting to create it.
ERROR: Unable to determine major/minor number of root device "UUID=1234 . . .'
You are being dropped into recovery shell
I found a few links on the web and in the forums, but nothing that really solved it for me. The solved ones usually downgraded the kernel. I haven't done that yet. I thought I'd try here first.
I have a 320GB USB HDD that I have been using to experiment with different linux distros. I have a few working successfully (OpenSUSE,Mint,Ubuntu,Debian,Fedora,etc). I'm very new at this but have been reading a lot and putting a lot of time into it. I have legacy grub loaded on the MBR and use the menu.lst on my openSUSE partition to boot everything. Because the partitions for some of the distros are so far into the disk I needed to create directories on openSUSE's /boot directory to contain the kernel and initrramfs files (like /boot/fedora). This seems to work for the other distros. I did the same thing for Arch.
So when I installed Arch I haven't used the bootloader section of the installation.
I'm using the 2011.08.09-netinstall-i686.iso Live CD.
I tried a few things including:
1. changing the HOOKS in /etc/mkinitcpio.conf
a. adding usb to the "HOOKS"
b. removing and adding autodetect
c. adding and removing "sata_sil" (although I'm not even sure if my device uses it)
2. changing the kernel line:
a. from using "UUID=" to (hd0,1) to sdb1.
b. added rootdelay=8
3. repartition all of my arch partitions using cfdisk from my Live CD and reinstall. I used gparted on OpenSUSE to do it the first time.
This may be connected. When I fdisk -l from the Arch Live CD I get extra data and an error for each of my arch partitions (and only my arch partitions):
Disk does't contain a valid partition table
When I fdisk -l from OpenSUSE I don't get the data paragraphs or errors about the arch partitions?
Here is my /etc/fstab:
# /etc/fstab: static file system information
# <file system> <dir> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>
tmpfs /tmp tmpfs nodev,nosuid 0 0
UUID=0e7556ef-b832-43e9-a8ba-c68dd2cd6143 /var reiserfs defaults 0 1
UUID=510bb601-13c1-46ec-87c0-a800dd2efb8b / ext4 defaults 0 1
UUID=cd78ab04-742d-4ba5-9727-90727de2dd14 swap swap defaults 0 0
UUID=dc5685e3-35b0-46d4-b259-61f2530ff36a /home ext3 defaults 0 1
And my HOOKS:
HOOKS="base udev autodetect pata scsi sata usb filesystems usbinput"
And my menu.lst:
1
default 0
timeout 32
gfxmenu (hd0,1)/boot/message
###openSUSE on sda2 - legacy grub
title openSUSE 11.4 - Celadon - gnome
root (hd0,1)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.37.6-0.7-default root=/dev/disk/by-id/usb-Seagate_FreeAgent_GoFlex_NA0E702X-0:0-part2 resume=/dev/disk/by-id/usb-Seagate_FreeAgent_GoFlex_NA0E702X-0:0-part1 splash=silent quiet showopts nomodeset vga=0x314
initrd /boot/initrd-2.6.37.6-0.7-default
###openSUSE failsafe on sda2 - legacy grub
title Failsafe -- openSUSE 11.4 - 2.6.37.6-0.7
root (hd0,1)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.37.6-0.7-default root=/dev/disk/by-id/usb-Seagate_FreeAgent_GoFlex_NA0E702X-0:0-part2 showopts apm=off noresume nosmp maxcpus=0 edd=off powersaved=off nohz=off highres=off processor.max_cstate=1 nomodeset x11failsafe vga=0x314
initrd /boot/initrd-2.6.37.6-0.7-default
###floppy###
#title Floppy
# rootnoverify (fd0)
# chainloader +1
###Fedora on sda5 - legacy grub
title Fedora 15-Lovelock gnome
root (hd0,4)
configfile /boot/grub/grub.conf
###Mint on sda6 - grub2
title Mint 9 Lucid Lynx gnome
root (hd0,5)
kernel /boot/grub/core.img
savedefault
boot
###PCLinux on sda7 - legacy grub
title PCLinuxOS 2011.6 KDE
root (hd0,6)
chainloader +1
###Ubuntu on sda8 - grub2
title Ubuntu 10.04.2 gnome
root (hd0,7)
kernel /boot/grub/core.img
savedefault
boot
####arch on sda10 - legacy grub
title ARCH
root (hd0,1)
#root UUID=XXXXXXXXXX44c5a3cd-dcb5-4cf1-933e-7a8ebac2a992
kernel /boot/arch/vmlinuz-linux root=UUID=510bb601-13c1-46ec-87c0-a800dd2efb8b ro rootdelay=8
#kernel /boot/arch/vmlinuz-linux root=(hd0,9)
#kernel /boot/arch/vmlinuz-linux root=/dev/sda10
initrd /boot/arch/initramfs-linux.img
savedefault
boot
###Debian on sda11 - grub2
title Debian 6.0.2.1 squeeze gnome
root (hd0,1)
kernel /boot/debian/vmlinuz-2.6.32-5-686 root=UUID=2b6052e2-ecdf-4796-81c8-b9e9142ca159 ro
initrd /boot/debian/initrd.img-2.6.32-5-686
savedefault
boot
###Mandriva on sda12 - legacy grub
title Mandriva 2011 KDE
root (hd0,1)
kernel /boot/mandriva/vmlinuz-2.6.38.7-desktop-1mnb2 root=UUID=5033f7fb-cac7-4db5-920c-c8bd2b51365f ro
initrd /boot/mandriva/initramfs-2.6.38.7-desktop-1mnb2.img
savedefault
boot
Here is my fdisk -l from OpenSUSE. I'm not quite swift enough to mount the hard drive and use the script utility from the Live CD yet, at least not tonight:
Disk /dev/sda: 320.1 GB, 320072932864 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 38913 cylinders, total 625142447 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x000c3bbb
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 2048 4208639 2103296 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda2 4208640 46153727 20972544 83 Linux
/dev/sda3 46153728 87113727 20480000 83 Linux
/dev/sda4 87115770 614031755 263457993 5 Extended
/dev/sda5 87115776 128075775 20480000 83 Linux
/dev/sda6 128077824 169037823 20480000 83 Linux
/dev/sda7 169039872 209999871 20480000 83 Linux
/dev/sda8 210001920 250961919 20480000 83 Linux
/dev/sda9 250963968 291923967 20480000 83 Linux
/dev/sda10 291924031 332886015 20480992+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda11 332888064 373848063 20480000 83 Linux
/dev/sda12 373848678 414992383 20571853 83 Linux
/dev/sda13 414994432 435474431 10240000 83 Linux
/dev/sda14 435474495 455956829 10241167+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda15 455958528 578881535 61461504 b W95 FAT32
/dev/sda16 578881599 614031755 17575078+ 83 Linux
Disk /dev/sdb: 160.0 GB, 160041885696 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19457 cylinders, total 312581808 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x95aa95aa
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 * 63 294889139 147444538+ 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sdb2 294889140 312576704 8843782+ 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
That's it for now.
Last edited by newbie55 (2011-09-23 22:19:58)

I'm IN! Thanks everyone for your suggestions!
The arch system didn't like the identifier I was using for the root partition. By looking at the /dev/disk/by-id while the arch system was running, I could see what the system wanted me to call the partition. So after the system error'd-out and I was in the recovery shell at the [ramfs /] prompt:
# ls -lF /dev/disk/by-id > by-id.txt
# vi by-id.txt
I could have used any of the identifiers listed in the by-id (there were 3), by-uuid(1), by-label(1) or by path(1). I tried them all. I had to write these down by hand because it is a ram filesystem.
The article that finally got me there is:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Pe … ice_naming
Anyway my openSUSE grub menu.lst ended up like this:
####arch on sda10 - legacy grub
title ARCH
root (hd0,1)
kernel /boot/arch/vmlinuz-linux root=/dev/disk/by-uuid/510bb601-13c1-46ec-87c0-a800dd2efb8b ro rootdelay=8 rootfstype=ext4
initrd /boot/arch/initramfs-linux.img
savedefault
boot
It's easy once you: 1. beat your head against the wall
2. read further
3. repeat 1 and 2
Back to the "Beginner's Guide",4 Post-Installation. Yikes!

*SOLVED* Boot from ubs-memorystick

Hi out there, hope someone can help me with this problem. I have made a regular dos-boot-disc on a usb memorystick, have tried 2 different, sandisc and a noname.
I have a pt880 motherboard and when i press F11 during bootup i've got the bootmenu and the stick is shown there. I choose it, but after all bios checks it says something like "search for boot records on usb bla bla bla". And there it hangs, the whole computer hangup. :(
Anyone got an idea what i have missed? I mean if the bootdisc is wrong done (but its not) it should say it cant find any boot record of boot files.
???

you might find this useful - it is good
https://forum-en.msi.com/index.php?topic=57971.0
what happened to Danny? he solved my first problem.

Mid-2009 MacBook Pro sees internal SATA hard drive, but will not boot from or format

I inherited a Mid-2009 MacBook Pro (15-inch, 2.53 GHz model) with a very strange issue.
It first presented itself as not being able to boot from the internal SATA hard drive that came with the computer. Nothing I tried could get it to boot, so I assumed the file system was corrupted beyond repair and booted from a CD to try to format the drive. Disk Utility on the CD would not format the drive, giving me strange error messages like "Unable to write to the last block of the device".
At this point I figured the drive itself must be toast, so I pulled it out and put another known-good SATA hard drive in, booted from CD, and attempted to format. Again, same error messages and an unsuccesful format.
So I had the bright idea of formatting one of the drives in an external enclosure and then putting it in the MBP to see if OS X would even install. No dice. Get a cryptic error message before installation even begins.
So I installed OS X on the drive in the external enclosure and put it in the MBP, and it attempts to boot, but never goes anywhere.
So to sum up, the symptoms I'm seeing:
MacBook Pro CAN see internal SATA hard drives.
MacBook Pro WILL NOT boot from any internal SATA hard drive and cannot format or install OS X to any internal SATA hard drive.
MacBook Pro WILL boot from any CD or external device and seems to work properly otherwise.
At this point I'm thinking it's one of two things: the hard drive ribbon cable or the SATA controller on the logic board.
Since the MacBook Pro seems to work completely fine other than this one issue, and will boot properly from both external devices and the CD (also a SATA device), I'm thinking and hoping that it's just the hard drive ribbon cable. From my searches online, I've heard that this batch of MacBook Pros is known to have issues with the hard drive ribbon cable, but it seems in most cases this manifests itself by the Mac not being able to see a drive at all.
I've done quite a bit of troubleshooting to get to this point, but right now I'm just looking for any feedback at all. Specifically I'd love to know a way I can easily test to see whether it's the logic board or the cable.

UPDATE: An interesting development!
I just tried a third known-good SATA hard drive, one which I believe supports SATA I only (but I'm not sure), and unlike the other drives that the Mac sees but cannot properly interact with, the Mac can't even see this one when I put it inside.
Frustrating as this may be, I believe I'm actually getting closer to a solution since my symptoms now appear to be closely aligned with people having SATA ribbon cable issues.
Onward!

Macbook pro will no longer boot from main sata bay after Yosemite

Hi!
I am really stuck as to why my macbook pro will no boot from the main Sata bay.
I have the macbook pro late 2011 - a few months ago I installed a samsung 840 evo, and moved the 500gb hdd into the optical bay and all has been working perfectly until last night.
I installed yosemite two days ago and it worked perfectly to begin with... then when I re opened my laptop everything was frozen. I restarted it and it wouldnt get past the grey screen. Then I managed to get it to the internet recovery stage....however it would not recognise the SSD, so I had to install Lion on the HDD.
After I logged on it gave me the message saying that the disc is not readable and on disk utility I can only see the "samsung ssd" but no details about it.
I thought that the SSD may have gone, but when i removed it and plugged it in via USB I was able to boot from it with no issues.
Does anyone know if this has anything to do with the new OS? or whether it is the Sata cable?
Thanks for any help!!!

Hi, I have been having the exact same problem with a late 2011 MBP 15 inch. I replaced the hard drive with a samsung SSD 1.5 years ago, along with a samsung SSD in the optical drive. It worked great until the Yosemite upgrade. The MBP seemed to work reasonably well for a few days after the upgrade, but then it started stalling on various programs (spinning beach ball on Mail, Safari, etc). Start-ups were also longer and had a loading bar each time, which was new since the upgrade. I left the MBP to sleep last night and when opening it, it crashed and tried to restart. On restart it loads to the login screen, then after I enter the password it partially loads (based on the loading bar), then shuts off. I removed the SSD and plugged it in with a USG, but that didn't change anything. Here is a picture after using CMD-V before it shuts off.

Boot from USB disk fails

goal:
I would like to boot from a USB pendrive
specs:
MSI K8N neo platinum (bios 1.4/1.56)
Transcend jetflash 256MB
problem:
The system does not boot from the disk
what i tried:
i made the usb stick bootable in 2 differend ways:
- i used the included software to make it bootable
- i used mkbt.exe to make a bootrecord
i updated the bios from 1.4 to 1.56
i did try to boot with the F11 option
i did set the primary boot order to USB-ZIP and i also tryed USB-FDD and USB-HDD
i also enabled the USB storage device in the bios
i tried to get the USB stick as a disk drive while booting from a disk, which also failed
is there anyone who have a idea how-to make it bootable?
i'm kinda out of idea's

what more specs do you want?
specs:
MSI K8N neo platinum (bios 1.4/1.56)
Transcend jetflash 256MB
AMD 64 3200+
Zalman cooler
2 512 Kingston memory
2 Maxtor HD
2 CD/DVD drives
ATI 9600 VGA card
i would like to boot from a pendrive for various reasons, but mostly because i would like to boot in Dos or Linux.

[865PE/G Neo2 Series] Question-boot from Promise IDE on 865PE Neo2 FIS2R

I bought my first MSI board a couple of years ago, an 865PE Neo2-LS. When I retired that, I went for an Abit 875P IC7-G. I just hated the Abit board, used it 3 months and replaced it with a new MSI 865PE Ne02 FIS2R.
I didn't reinstall WIndows XP Pro with the new motherboard. Everything seemed to be OK until I could get around to a clean install of XP. One reason I wanted the FIS2R model was that I wanted to use the faster Promise IDE connection for my boot drive. I had a heck of a time getting the drive to boot, but it finally worked. I was having a few problems that I thought a repair reinstall of XP might solve. So, I tried that yesterday.
Now I cannot get the same drive to boot from the Promise IDE controller. I saw that setting were changed in the BIOS and I can't figure out how to set them so I can boot from the C: drive on the Promise. It will boot fine from the regular primary IDE controller, but I want to use that for two other hard drives I use for storage. The secondary IDE connection is for a CDRW and DVDRW drives.
I've looked at the FAQs and read the manuals. How do I just use the IDE on the Promise? What should my BIOS settings look like? The Promise drivers are installed on the boot drive, the system will post and I'll see a flash of the Windows XP intro screen, then a flash of a blue screen and it kicks it back to booting again. I've never been able to see what that blue screen is telling me. THe drives I want to put on the Promise controller are PATA drives, I don't want SATA or RAID, just using the Promise as a third connection for IDE drives.
Thanks for any help anyone can offer. I have tried every imaginable way of setting the BIOS, but can't seem to hit the right combination. That's what I did on my first try when I got it working, hit a lucky combination and it worked.

Thank you. I had already tried the settings in the post you linked to. I had no luck there. I've reinstalled the Promise drivers, but the boot drive refuses to go past the Windows flash screen before resetting. I think it's quite simple what I'm trying to do. I have six drives. On IDE 1 I want to two storage drives to be connected. On IDE 2 I'm putting the Cd and DVD optical drives. On IDE 3 (Promise) I would like to have my boot (master) drive and a slave drive. Rearranging cables I can get the drive to boot from IDE 1, but no luck with IDE 3. I think it's the Promise drivers, they appear to be installed, but I don't think they are working. I'm going to copy the Promise drivers to a floppy and reinstall XP with the boot drive on IDE 3 and see if I get anywhere with that.
The link referred more to SATA and RAID setup, I just want to use the Promise IDE. I'd sure hate to have to put the awful Abit IC7-G back in my system as I can only get 5 IDE devices in that one instead of the 6 the MSI should run.

875p Neo-FIS2R - won't boot from CD

I am assuming I had a hard drive failure, but not certain. This was and old (9 years) hard IDE hard drive. My PC would no longer boot, saying "Boot Failure." I was able to boot with the WinXP cd and it did not see the hard drive. When booting with the CD, it took a LONG time to move from the splash screen into the CD boot process.
I bought a new SATA hard drive hoping that would solve the problem but no success. I attached the new drive to SER1. I can see it in the BIOS along with the CD/DVD drive. Both are selected in the boot order, but it will not boot to the CD with WinXP on it. The CD was on IDE 2 master. I moved to IDE 1 master and it made no difference. I turned off the splash screen and it says it is attempting to boot from CD/DVD but then fails.
The CD/DVD drive was just replaced with a new unit in November 2010. The power supply was also replaced in November (430w).
Any ideas? Thanks!

I got it to work. I tried a new IDE cable and that didn't help. Neither did trying to load from a DVD.
Finally, I put an old (broken) IDE hard drive on IDE 2 (CD is no IDE 1, new SATA hard drive on IDE 3). When I turned it on, it was searching for the second IDE master for a while, so I had it abort. It then booted right up with the WinXP CD. The Windows CD then got stuck at one point trying to access the broked IDE drive (just kept making a clanking noise). So I removed the power from that drive and the Windows install proceeded, and now everything works fine. I reconnected the other SATA drives (four in total) now and removed the IDE 2 cable completely.
Any ideas why it worked this way? It seems and IDE hard drive had to be connected to get the CD/DVD to boot. I have not tried booting to the CD again, now that everything is working. I will try that just to see what happens.

Complete Panic--cannot boot from CD

I've had my iBook G4 for several years and never had a problem with it. My iMail was getting particularly full (it's the installation that came with the computer, and has not been recently updated) and tonight I was deleting massive amounts of emails--like 300 of them. Ooops--realized I'd deleted one I wanted to keep, so I opened the trash folder. I had not yet cleaned out those 300 emails I intended to delete. The folder was so big that the program pinwheeled, so I did a force quit of the programs. No force quit box came up. Hmmm. Decided to close Internet Explorer and Excel, which were also open at the time. Those froze up, too. Turned the computer off completely by holding down the power button.**
Tried a restart. Got the chime, got the fan/hard drive clicks, got the apple with the little spinning thing under it. However, it just sat at that screen, fans whirring, HD clicking...forever and ever. Tried booting from the CD, and it failed to recognize my HD, so I couldn't do a repair permissions via the CD. Meaning: I got the Disk Utility Screen, but in the left-hand column where your HD would normally appear, my only options were the CD.
Tried booting a few more times. Looked at support and saw that I can re-set my RAM sometimes if startups are troublesome. Did a reboot while holding command-option-p-r. It did the requisite startup and then a restart, so I assume it re-set the RAM, but again the farthest the comp would go was to get the apple up and then the little spinning thing under it--while fan/HD make noise (not weird noise, just noise to let me know it's alive). Tried the install CD one more time and this time, got into Disk Utility and forever and ever it held me at "Gathering Disk Information..." while fan/HD made noise.
I have not downloaded anything or made any recent installations.
I do updates on the first of each month. It is the evening of the 30th--meaning, Murphy's Law is in full effect, because I would have totally backed things up...tomorrow. I am a writer. My 2 novels are housed on this computer and the work I've done in the past month will be totally lost if I can't just get to the HD and get these files. I'm panicking. If you can help, please let me know. I'm typing this via my partner's Mac and won't have access to the email connected to this account's login. Please, please post here if you think you have some solutions, or contact me at my hotmail account, [email protected].
Best,
Kate
**No--I do not normally use Microsoft's crap-tastic products, unless forced to as with Excel and Word, and I only used Explorer tonight because there was a website that wasn't Safari-compatible...blecch!

Well, actually, the Genius bar doesn't charge, but they get very busy and it takes a few days to get a slot at my local store.
The first time with the disk in, I tried pressing 'c' on start up - Nothing apart from the disks spinnng a bit then stopping, which is what I get when I try to start 'normally'.
Because the disk was effectively stuck in the drive, I then did a 'alt-apple-p-r' on start up, holding these keys down for a while (maybe 30 secs) until the grey screen appeared. It then starte (almost) fine. At that point I rapidly salvaged my files and, within 30 mins, the disk started grinding and the whole thing stopped. This happened a few times - I would kill the machine before the grinding got too bad and wrecked the disk.
EventuallyI re-started by the same process and took off all energy saver-type settings. Since then, it has been working and not grinding. I have now re-set the energy saver without causing any further problems.
Like you, I had the machne for a few years (maybe 4) without any problems. Unlike you, I always try to resist any upgrades unless I'm having a problem but, shortly before these issues emerged, I accidentally hit the install (rather than cancel) button on Software Update and caught a bunch of so-called improvements. The first thing I noticed was that one of the memory slots stopped working, which was widely documented in 10.3.9 and G4 powerbooks, although Apple have only recalled a limited (more recent) batch for logic board replacement. My guess is that the upgrade broke something else in my logic board eventually.
I hoep you can find a way to at least get your files back.
Good luck

I can't boot from the DiskWarrior CD!

Something went wrong with the OS X filesystem on my PowerBook, and whenever it boots from disk, Mac OS X fails and falls into Single-User Mode. From here, I can run fsck, but it can't repair the drive.
I was told that DiskWarrior could probably fix my problem, so I decided to give it a try.
The problem is that it won't boot on my PowerBook! This is despite the fact that the PowerBook will boot just fine from a Mac OS 9.2.1 CD and that the DiskWarrior CD will boot fine on my iBook G4 running Mac OS X 10.4.3.
I've been trying for hours, and I've done the following steps:
Holding down "c" at boot. - Results with Floppy and Flashing Question mark.
Holding down Command-Option-Shift-Delete at boot. - Results in the same.
Resetting PRAM and doing above actions.
Booted into Open Firmware and typed "boot cdrom"- this gave me a grey OS X boot screen with an action not permitted sign.
Any ideas? I can get my data off of the disk by using "scp" via the single-user mode, but it doesn't do me any good because I can't cleanly reinstall OS X Jaguar because I've misplaced the first install disc!!
What can I do here? What are my options? By the way, the DiskWarrior version is 3.0.3.
Thanks for your help!
Brian

I must plead ignorance since I always use Toast, but
does Disk Utility burn bootable OSX CDs? I am sure
you have the answer but I just don't have the time
right now to check.
It sure does. I've used it multiple times in the past to burn bootable CDs.
One option is to use the freeware 'BootCD' to create
a bootable CD and then you can add whatever utilities
you wish before it is burned. This will have to be
done on a Mac that has Jaguar since the Wallstreet
does not natively support 10.3 or 10.4 and the
BootCD uses the OS on the "host" computer to
construct its boot OS.
ttp://lowendmac.com/misc/05/0126.html
I will check this option out. You're just full of work-arounds aren't you?
I put my own DW CD 3.0.3 in my Wallstreet, made on my
iBook burner since the 3.0.3 Update I downloaded
requires using the original CD (I had either 3.0.1 or
3.0.2) and burning a new one with the 3.0.3 Update.
It will not boot my Wallstreet. So I started up in
9.x, launched my XPostFacto (I am running 10.3.8 on
my Wallstreet) and XPostFacto identified the DW CD as
a "MacOS X 10.3.2 Install CD". I believe this was the
version I was running on the iBook when I burned the
new DW 3.0.3 CD -or- this was the version OSX Alsoft
used on my original 3.0.1 or 3.0.2 CD...I can't
recall. So it makes sense my DW 3.0.3 won't boot my
Wallstreet. I am wondering if the real cause of a
no-boot for you is a too modern OSX on the CD. Before
spending a lot of time on CD-Rs, I would contact
Alsoft and see if the Wallstreet will boot the 3.0.3
CD.
I was worried about this originally. I will certainly contact Alsoft about this and post back.
If you are unsuccessful booting the DW CD and have a
set of Jag CDs, you can either erase the HD and start
fresh or perform an Archive & Install...this
preserves your Home folder but you do need sufficient
HD space for the A&I.
I ordered new Jag CDs today. I might just do this. However, I'd still like to get this DiskWarrior issue straightened out for future use and for fellow users of these discussions.
You can also install 10.3.x or 10.4.x (you need CDs)
using XPostFacto. If curious, read all about it:
http://eshop.macsales.com/OSXCenter/XPostFacto/
I was thinking about this at one point in time. How well does Mac OS X 10.3 run on the Wallstreet? I saw something in the release notes about a video problem. Can you confirm anything?
Thanks for your Wallstreet expertise!
Brian

[SOLVED] Booting from Asus U3S6 SATA Controller fails

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