New
#1
Problem with two SATA drives
Hoping someone might have some suggestions for this.
So, after an upgrade I ended up with the following system:
Asus P8P67 LE motherboard with Core I3 2120 and 4MB RAM.
3 Hard drives:
1. 40GB IDE drive with Linux Mint
2. New Seagate 250GB SATA hard drive
3. Seagate 80GB SATA hard drive with Windows XP installed
The plan was to install windows 7 onto the new 250GB hard drive. After a lot of problems with trying to install from DVD, I ended up installing from USB. The first install was to the 250GB drive (2) with both other drives unplugged. After that worked, I tried plugging both drives back in, but Windows 7 wouldn't start, complaining about a hardware problem.
Eventually I tracked this down to some kind of problem with the SATA drives. I can install and boot Windows 7 from the 250GB drive, with everything else plugged in but the other SATA drive. As soon as I plug that in, Windows 7 says it has a Hardware error.
So, I then deleted all the partitions from the 80GB ATA drive (3) and reformatted it so it was completely blank. Then Windows 7 booted fine with everything plugged in. That looked like it might have been the problem. So I installed Linux Mint on the 80GB ATA drive (2). And now same problem, Windows 7 won't boot once that drive is plugged in.
If I boot Linux everything is fine - I can see both other ATA drives simultaneously. So it's obviously not a hardware problem, but something specific to Windows 7.
Has anyone got any suggestions? I've tried fiddling with plugging the drives onto different combinations of SATA ports on the motherboard, and no luck there.
I've installed all the motherboard chipset drivers in Windows 7, and the BIOS looks like it's up to date.