IDE wont boot and SATA too slow

gbu · 20 Dec 2010

Ive got a weird problem that falls into 2 parts

First problem is that i have two 8month old identical SATA Western Digital drives, one for storage/backup and one for OS etc, both partitioned.
Western Digital Caviar Green 640GB Advanced Format
Brand new self built PC al 8 month old parts.

I have had a problem where my PC was sluggish and lagged heavily if a program was installing or there was updates from MS etc

After a lot of other hardware checking and swapping(RAM, Graphics Card etc) i was about to buy a new PSU thinking not enough power.

Before i did this i thought id retry my old 6years old IDE drive just in case it was a hdd problem, to my amazement it got rid of the lagging and everything is super fast as it should of been these last 8 months!!

Now i have run Western Digitals diagnostics and different hard drive monitoring software and all have come back with no problems.

So is it a hard drive problem or something other like connections etc a si cant see why an old IDE driver would in fact be faster then the newer SATA drive?

ok now second problem, since i have the IDE drive in place i cant boot directly from it unless the SATA is present, if i try on its own i just get a message at boot saying please insert boot media, but with them both I'm place i get the option of a dual boot and its fine.

i have gone into BIOS and select the IDE as first boot, changed jumper settings etc but still it wont boot on its own?

Of course if i can slove the first problem then i wont have to woory about the 2nd as i will just remove the IDE drive. :)

pricetech · 20 Dec 2010

Not being able to boot from the PATA drive makes me think boot code is missing. You can restore it using the bootsect command.

Not sure why your SATA drives are slow. I would take a look at the BIOS if it were on my bench and see if I saw anything there that might cause it.

You might also run factory diags on the drives to see what they have to say.

gbu · 20 Dec 2010

How would i use the bootsect command?
I checked through the BIOS and after resetting defaults set the IDE to boot first and even removed the other SATA drives but still no joy.

In the mean time i have run o&o hard drive utility and got these results, what i find odd is the hard drive i have my OS on has a different reading bearing in mind they are identcial drives (which ive highlighted) to show, would this be making a difference?

SATA1-Storage

SATA2-OS installed

IDE

pricetech · 21 Dec 2010

My bad. "bootsect" isn't in Windows 7, it's in PE and the AIK. Us old guys get confused sometimes.

Search Microsoft's website to see if you can download it separately, though you may need more than just bootsect before it's over.

I'm not familiar with o&o, so I can't comment on your results except to say it seems to have found a problem with something.

gbu · 21 Dec 2010

Ok thanks for your help :)

What i have since found out is that the SATA drive being 'Green' only runs at 5400rpm thus taking a lot longer then the IDE drive which is 7200rpm so this may explain the lagging and general slowness whilst installing.

I will order a new non 'green' drive and seee if this helps, if so i will remove the IDE drive and so wont need to worry about boot problem with this drive. :)

pricetech · 21 Dec 2010

Cool.

Sorry about the "brain belch". I've been working on my Windows PE creations to make sure I didn't leave out anything in my tutorial.

gbu · 21 Dec 2010

No worries mate, just happy someone replied to me :)

Who knows i may be back when the new drive comes and that doesn't work either lol

1Bowtie · 21 Dec 2010

SATA will alway be first boot, WD Caviar Black is 7200 rpm drive and probably the most reliable 5 year warranty

PS When installing the os be sure you unplug all other hdd's