Can't connect IDE hard drive to SATA motherboard

[Adrian]

Similar Issue at PC pitstop Forum

4:15pm Mon May 11 2009
To give you the run down, I have a Dell XPS 435 that has a sata motherboard and a sata hard drive. I want to use my old slave drive (Western Digital WD1600 (250gb) as a slave drive so I bought the sata motherboard to IDE data connector and the power connector. I thought I read somewhere that the IDE drive should be placed as a master too. I turned on my computer and it would not boot, a message came up and said no boot disk found. Unplugged the power to the IDE drive and my computer booted up just fine. Turned my computer off again, plugged in the IDE hard drive and got the same error message. I tried putting the pin connector on the back as the hdd acting as the master with a slave, as a slave, and at the connector CS (whatever that means) and it still gave me an error. I just unplugged it and it worked fine again. Does anyone has any idea what I am doing wrong!!! I am pulling my hair out because this is frustrating.
Thanks to the Pit
mouse
5:47pm Mon May 11 2009

Since your using an IDE to Sata connecter remove the jumper on the IDE drive. Sata drives aren't jumpered and your system is treating the IDE as Sata.

8210GUY
5:52pm Mon May 11 2009

Never used such an adaptor so can't comment about the jumper, but as your adding a hard drive have you checked in the bios that the boot order and more importantly disk priority hasn't changed ?
I suspect the boot drive may no longer be the primary drive or something similar, so check that as well.

xyphr3
9:36pm Mon May 11 2009

I have tried everything and still nothing. I am going to try to contact Dell when I get a chance but anyone else have an idea? I tried turning on RAID but that did not do anything for me.

TomGL2
12:49am Tue May 12 2009

I suspect that adding the new drive caused a change in the boot sequence. Jumper the drive as a master (for a WDC drive, remove all jumpers), and connect the power and SATA cable. Power up, enter BIOS, and find the boot sequence settings. Make the SATA drive the first boot device, then save the settings and restart.

8210GUY
4:00am Tue May 12 2009

As I said above (although not in as much depth).

Another thought after seeing your raid comment, you do NOT use the raid setting unless you have raid, but your saying it reminded me about 1 other possible option, in the same bit as you saw raid, what are your other options ?
When using Sata and ide without raid make sure you have got Advanced or Both selected, the wording may vary, but you may need to tell the system that you are using both Sata and ide, see if that helps.

xyphr3
6:37am Tue May 12 2009

Thanks for the replies. I only see Raid or SATA option. When my SATA drive is the only one running, I can see it in the BIOS but when I plug in this IDE drive, no hard drives are shown but when I try to start windows, it shows that there are 3 drives availibe (2HDD and a DVD drive). Last night I just transferred everything off the hard drive by an external and I am going to format the drive and see if that does anything. I wonder if XP did something that Vista is not liking.

Joe C
6:44am Tue May 12 2009

check the sata ports on the motherboard, the sata drive should be the first port (sata 0 or sata 1depending on the system board)

8210GUY
6:57am Tue May 12 2009

Just tried finding a manual to see what bios options you have, but there are a couple of variations of your model so I couldn't pin it down, but the closest I got was saying you can choose raid or AHCI, so you want to set it to AHCI as your not using raid.

badbinary
6:57am Tue May 12 2009

have you tried booting with ONLY the ide drive plugged in?

got the flavor
7:12am Tue May 12 2009

Ive found on most dell machines a lot of bios settings cant be changed, In some cases once you select sata mode in the bios some more options will appear varing from standard enhanced and ide mode if you can access these settings select ide mode.

xyphr3
8:52pm Tue May 12 2009

Thanks again for all of the replies. I can't try to ide drive by itself because it was used as a slave, so it has nothing to boot. Another thing, the motherboard has a the 4 SATA connections and the main HDD has the first one, then the cd player, then the slave, would that matter at all? I don't think it would. I am going to e-mail Dell at this point and see what info they can give me because in BIOS, it only gives me the choices of SATA or RAID. Thanks everyone for your help.

8210GUY
5:26am Wed May 13 2009

When it comes to Sata ports it makes no difference which you connect to, they don't have master\slave issues like ide ones, BUT, I have never used a Sata converter to ide so have no idea about how that may change things, I take it the board has no ide port on it ?
But that aside my best guess is you will still need to follow the ide master\slave layout for the ide drive, eg master on the end plug etc.

Joe C
5:46am Wed May 13 2009

An IDE drive by itself would not need to be master, but set as a single drive on the jumpers

 

[RustyNail]

sometimes a fresh approach might work too. Although I haven't had a chance to use it yet, I bought one of these:

Newegg.com - acomdata SMBXXXU2E-Blk Aluminum 3.5" Obsidian Black USB 2.0 Samba Enclosure Kit - External Enclosures

unfortunately, it is only usb out, not both SATA & USB.
if USB works on your box then this should work too. Unless you're trying to use that ide drive as your C: drive that is. Probably not what you were looking for but it is another idea. Good luck to you!

Rusty

 

[Minnesotamike]

Hi Adrian,

When I opened the case the first time, I was surprised to see a floppy connection. I sure do wish they had an IDE connection. That would make things so much easier. I may not have explained everything clearly, so I'll try and give the basic run down. When I first tried installing the drive, I could get Windows to boot, but the drive could not be worked with because of the error "Device not ready". I got this message when I tried to allocate or format the drive. I soon lost the ability to even get into Windows with the drive connected. That is where I am now. I get to the boot screen giving me the option to enter Boot Menu and BIOS. No matter what I do here, it will not go any farther. Basically, if the drive is connected, I go no where.

The discussion that you sent is similar to what I am dealing with. I have tried all the different SATA controller settings (RAID, IDE, & AHCI). It's currently set to RAID. I have also tried going without the jumper on the IDE drive. I guess I can try again. It's not going to hurt. As far as the boot priority, it's set to the SATA drive. Even when I was able to get into BIOS with the IDE drive connected, it was set to the SATA drive.

I wish HP would offer some help. I was told a week ago, by them, that somebody would be in contact with me "very, very soon". Maybe it's taking so long due to the International Date Line.

RustyNail,

Thanks for the suggestion. I am trying to avoid putting something else on my desk. I will keep it in mind though.

Mike

 

[RustyNail]

RustyNail,

Thanks for the suggestion. I am trying to avoid putting something else on my desk. I will keep it in mind though.

Mike

sorry, I just reread your first post. Considering all the hassles to date though, that is how I would go. Or buy another sata drive and xfer whatever it is that you want from your IDE drive. They're cheap and not much more that the controller card that I think you mentioned (can't remember for sure). Legacy issues are never fun.

 

[Minnesotamike]

Yea, that might be the way I go. The SATA drives are cheap. Less then $100 for a 1TB. I am just hoping to get this to work since it's "suppose" to. You know how that goes.

Mike

 

[Adrian]

RAID

Well you have given us somthing more.
Are you able to give us a screen shot of the following:

1. Drive Configuration
2. Mass storage device

You are set in redundant AKA Raid configuration and that could be the cause of your boot issues as when you start the post process the bios is looking for a redundant drive.

Adrian

 

[Adrian]

Hi Adrian,

When I opened the case the first time, I was surprised to see a floppy connection. I sure do wish they had an IDE connection. That would make things so much easier. I may not have explained everything clearly, so I'll try and give the basic run down. When I first tried installing the drive, I could get Windows to boot, but the drive could not be worked with because of the error "Device not ready". I got this message when I tried to allocate or format the drive. I soon lost the ability to even get into Windows with the drive connected. That is where I am now. I get to the boot screen giving me the option to enter Boot Menu and BIOS. No matter what I do here, it will not go any farther. Basically, if the drive is connected, I go no where.

The discussion that you sent is similar to what I am dealing with. I have tried all the different SATA controller settings (RAID, IDE, & AHCI). It's currently set to RAID. I have also tried going without the jumper on the IDE drive. I guess I can try again. It's not going to hurt. As far as the boot priority, it's set to the SATA drive. Even when I was able to get into BIOS with the IDE drive connected, it was set to the SATA drive.

Mike

As you typed your drive settings are set in bios as RAID.
I suggest you re-set your drive congig to SATA and change the storage setting to IDE as you see I have 2 SATA drives sans the old PATA drive.
Here are shots of my bios to go by.

Adrian

 

[DocBrown]

Well you have given us somthing more.


Are you able to give us a screen shot of the following:

1. Drive Configuration
2. Mass storage device

You are set in redundant AKA Raid configuration and that could be the cause of your boot issues as when you start the post process the bios is looking for a redundant drive.

Adrian

I think Adrian is on to something here ! If you only have 1 SATA HD, I don't think that you want RAID enabled in the bios.

Also are the SATA connectors numbered ? Which one is the primary SATA drive connected to ? Which one did you connect the adapter to ?


" Doc "

 

[Minnesotamike]

Problem fixed! While going through things again with the adapter, and connecting and reconnecting things, I found out that the power connection on the adapter was not completely in. Man, do I feel stupid. I never even thought about that since the drive had been recognized in BIOS. I have started and restarted the system numerous times without a hitch. I went into Disk Management and the drive is recognized as healthy and online. The full drive is ready to be used. I had a feeling it was something small that I was forgetting. I appreciate all your help with this!! I will now move on to my other problem. Problems with transfer speed on my network. I will start a new thread. Thanks again, you guys are great.

Mike

 

[DocBrown]

Congrats Mike,

You have passed the first level of Trial & Error Testing


" Doc "

 

[Minnesotamike]

Why does the first one have to be so embarrassing? :huh:

 

[DocBrown]

Why does the first one have to be so embarrassing? :huh:

That's because we all learn something useful in the next situation.

See I should have thought of asking you to reconnect all connections to rule out a loose connection. You should see some of my Crazy Experiments :shock:


" Doc "

 

[Adrian]

Well done Mike.
You had the "AHA" minute!
Cheers!

 

[Minnesotamike]

Thanks guys. Have a great 2010!

Mike