Can PATA & SATA coexist peacefully?

[GeekyGirlfriend]

I'm trying to help my boyfriend install a new SATA drive and not having much luck. The system has an IDE drive used for misc. storage (the original drive), and an SATA drive (added a few months after he bought the machine) with WinXP installed. Now he's purchased another SATA drive and wants to add it as well.

Two problems: First, boot problems arose when the older SATA drive was installed, the original IDE drive went from being the boot drive to being just generic storage, and WinXP was installed onto the SATA drive. The computer would give a "NTLDR is missing" message and refuse to boot unless the WinXP setup disk was in the CDROM drive. When the message to "Press any key to boot from CD..." message appears, we just ignore it, and Windows boots up ok. Not normal, but at least my boyfriend could use his computer.

The second problem is that the new SATA drive is detected by the BIOS and appears in Device Mgr, but not in My Computer. I can't figure out how to access it so it can be formatted. It doesn't appear under WinXP's Disk Management utility either.

In a perfect world, the IDE drive would remain as storage, the older SATA drive would also become misc. storage, and the new SATA drive would hold the operating system. (He actually does need this much storage for his large video editing projects.)

Although the BIOS detects all three drives correctly, there's no option to differentiate between the IDE and SATA drives in the boot order - I can only choose "Removable Disk", "CDROM", "Harddisk", "Legacy Lan", or one other thing I can't remember but which didn't apply.

I understand that we created a monster by moving the operating system from one disk to another, and now we want to do it yet again. Is there any way this can be made to work? Thanks in advance for any help!

[Paul Komski]

The second problem is that the new SATA drive is detected by the BIOS and appears in Device Mgr, but not in My Computer.

Does it appear normal or with yellow punctuation mark in Device Manager?

Is the new SATA 3.0 speed on a 1.5 speed mobo and how many GB? Also do you have options to use the SATA as SATA/ACPI/IDE-emulation in the BIOS setup?

Although the BIOS detects all three drives correctly, there's no option to differentiate between the IDE and SATA drives in the boot order - I can only choose "Removable Disk", "CDROM", "Harddisk", "Legacy Lan", or one other thing I can't remember but which didn't apply.

There is usually a secondary menu on modern systems that allows one to choose between the various HDDs in a system whether or not Hard Drive is the preferred type of boot device or not.

Adding/Subtracting hard drives can always change the boot order in the BIOS setup.

The computer would give a "NTLDR is missing" message and refuse to boot unless the WinXP setup disk was in the CDROM drive. When the message to "Press any key to boot from CD..." message appears, we just ignore it, and Windows boots up ok. Not normal, but at least my boyfriend could use his computer.

It would appear that either having the CD in the drive affects the boot order or that boot.ini on the relevant drive is incorrect. It is possible you are booting from the IDE to the SATA. Check both to see if both drives have a boot.ini file on them in the root of the active partition on the drive in question.

Can a utility such as BiNG (in my sig) or other partitioning utility see the new SATA?

[GeekyGirlfriend]

Originally Posted by Paul Komski

Does it appear normal or with yellow punctuation mark in Device Manager?

It appears normal and Dev. Mgr. says "This device is working properly".

Is the new SATA 3.0 speed on a 1.5 speed mobo and how many GB? Also do you have options to use the SATA as SATA/ACPI/IDE-emulation in the BIOS setup?

The mobo is SATA 3.0, and I'm guessing the new hard disk is too, but there's no paperwork with it. It's a Western Digital 500 GB 7200 RPM, brand new. I looked thru the BIOS again and didn't see anything about emulation. However, I did find the secondary menu you mentioned and was able to arrange the boot order so that the older SATA drive with WinXP installed was the first hard disk listed. Afterward, there was no change in the goofy behavior at boot-up, still needed the setup CD in the drive. :-(

It would appear that either having the CD in the drive affects the boot order or that boot.ini on the relevant drive is incorrect. It is possible you are booting from the IDE to the SATA. Check both to see if both drives have a boot.ini file on them in the root of the active partition on the drive in question.

I did a search on all drives for BOOT.INI, looking in hidden and system files, and the search returned NOTHING! How can that be? Funny thing, NTLDR is right there on the older SATA drive, the one that gives the "NTLDR is missing' msg on boot up. It does look like the boot.ini file is discombobulated and pointing in all the wrong directions, but there's no telling where the file actually is. I also went to the command line and looked on the root dir of the C: drive (the older SATA drive) - no boot.ini. The IDE drive was reformatted when the older SATA drive was installed, and has no files on it at all.

Can a utility such as BiNG (in my sig) or other partitioning utility see the new SATA?

Thanks for the link. I looked it over and was really intimidated, but I'll give it a try since I don't know what else to do. I think, though, that I should solve the problem with the older SATA drive not booting correctly before I tackle formatting the new SATA drive. However, I'll go ahead and burn a BiNG CD while I'm waiting to hear from you.

Thanks for your help!

[Paul Komski]

If this is Windows XP then there must/should be a boot.ini file somewhere. Possibly it got deleted and the default position is chosen in lieu of an actual specified location. The file can be rebuilt by booting to the Recovery Console, logging on to its command prompt and issuing the command:

bootcfg /rebuild

See: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/291980 for full details.

An existing boot.ini file can also be edited from the route: ControlPanel -> System -> Advanced -> StartupAndRecovery/Settings -> Edit. Maybe check that out and report what it says. If notepad opens (as it should) have a look at the File Menu/SaveAs value that comes up and that should tell you where the file is located.

I don't understand why the new drive is seen in DeviceManager and not in DiskManagement. Can you double check this because possibly one is giving misleading information and maybe even post a couple of screenshots using TinyPic or similar.

Don't be intimidated by BiNG. Just boot to the CD, Cancel Setup and go straight into Partition Work to see what drives and partitions it finds.

[GeekyGirlfriend]

I tried BiNG, and it found the new SATA drive with no problem and allowed me to partition it. When I booted Windows back up, the drive was there in My Computer, ready for formatting. Voila! That was about the easiest thing I've ever done! Thank you so much for this excellent program. :-)

Now all I have to do is fix the boot problem...

I went through the Control Panel and found the boot.ini file, and when I tried "Save As", it showed the file as being on the root dir of C:. However, the file doesn't show up in an Explorer window, even though I set the options to display system and hidden files. I even saved the file and refreshed the screen, but it still didn't show up. Here is what was in the file:

[bootloader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)fdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOW S
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect

I read the MS Knowledge Base article you recommended and tried bootcfg /rebuild from the Recovery Console, but I'm still getting the "NTLDR is missing" msg on boot up unless the setup CD is in the CD drive. I double checked the BIOS to make sure the SATA drive with the WinXP installation on it was the first hard drive in the boot order and I noticed something curious. The older SATA drive is HDD0 and holds the OS, but the BIOS lists it as "2nd SATA-M". The new SATA drive which isn't even formatted is "1st SATA-M". Does that matter?

Also, I would like your opinion on the best configuration for this 3-hard drive system. The IDE drive is 140 GB, the older SATA is 160 GB, and the new SATA drive is 500 GB. My boyfriend will be using this computer for some heavy-duty, professional video editing. The software he uses for that is HUGE and chews up a ton of memory. The video files he works on are enormous too. For best performance, which drive should hold the OS? Should his video editing software and other software be installed on that same drive or on one of the others? I'm assuming he'll be dedicating one drive for storage of the data (video) files.

Thank you so much for all your help!

[Paul Komski]

The older SATA drive is HDD0 and holds the OS, but the BIOS lists it as "2nd SATA-M". The new SATA drive which isn't even formatted is "1st SATA-M". Does that matter?

Hard drive enumeration is not a constant feast and one bit of software will enumerate differently than other software on the same hardware/hardware combinations.

I would simply try reversing the order in the BIOS, save the changes and see what happens.

Suggest you go to a command prompt and enter:

attrib -h -s -r C:\boot.ini

Then check the root of C: in windows explorer.

The presence of a CD in the drive (can it be any CD?) allowing a normal boot is a bit obscure because the "NTLDR is Missing" message normally emanates from the hard drive partition's PartitionBootSector that the BIOS has directed the boot processes to. The wrong partition being marked as active, the wrong hard drive being chosen by the BIOS (or by boot.ini) or a malconfigured boot.ini file being the most common causes of the message.

A screenshot of Disk Management could be helpful.
And as an afterthought what is the setting in folder options for "Hide Protected Operating System Files (Recommended)"?

[GeekyGirlfriend]

After changing the attributes at the command line, boot.ini has finally appeared in the Explorer window. Thanks!

A screenshot of Disk Management could be helpful.

Sorry, I tried, but the file is larger than allowed.

I would simply try reversing the order in the BIOS, save the changes and see what happens.

I played around with moving the different drives to the first position. We know what happens when the drive that holds the OS is there - I get the "NTLDR is missing" msg. With the new, unformatted SATA drive in first position, the computer booted to the point where it would ordinarily ask if I want to boot from the cd, then it just stopped - no messages or anything, it just sat there. So just for thrills, I moved the formatted-but-unused IDE drive to first position, and guess what? The computer booted all the way WITHOUT THE SETUP CD!!! No error msgs, no hangs, smooth as glass.

The IDE originally was the only drive in the computer and thus held the OS. Do you think it might still be harboring some important info, or is this maybe just a BIOS thing? Since it's working fine now, I wouldn't worry about it except that I anticipate moving the OS to the new drive and don't want to run into more problems.

With everything working now, I want to proceed to installing the OS on the new drive, but I really would like your opinion as to whether that's the best way to use these drives. Doesn't Windows use available HD space as virtual memory? I'm thinking I should install the OS and any other software on the new drive since it's the biggest, and use the other two for data storage. I don't see any point in partitioning any of the drives, but I would like your opinion on it.

Thank you so much for your help! Sometimes being a good geek (and impressing your boyfriend!) is not so much about knowing everything there is to know, but more about knowing where to go for help. :-)

[Paul Komski]

With everything working now, I want to proceed to installing the OS on the new drive, but I really would like your opinion as to whether that's the best way to use these drives. Doesn't Windows use available HD space as virtual memory? I'm thinking I should install the OS and any other software on the new drive since it's the biggest, and use the other two for data storage. I don't see any point in partitioning any of the drives, but I would like your opinion on it.

OK so "The IDE drive is 140 GB, the older SATA is 160 GB, and the new SATA drive is 500 GB" and everything is working so its not clear why you want to change the OS from running from the 160 gig SATA to the 500 gig SATA. It's also not clear whether you want to transfer everything on the 160 to the 500 gig HDD or to do a brand new clean installation.

As a generalisation it is a good idea to have one's OS running on the fastest drive and on as small a partition as is reasonable. A small system partition like that is easily backed up as an image file and utilities only have to scan a relatively small amount of disk space and thus complete their tasks more quickly. Programs and data can be installed to any accessible partition/drive. I think it is a good idea to keep programs that will run from start-up in the same system partition but apart from that farming out program installations and particularly data (docs, pics, music, video, etc) to other partitions or drives has great merit.

Virtual memory has nothing to do with file data storage. It is maintained in current Windows versions in a file called pagefile.sys where it functions as an extension of RAM (memory). When extra memory is needed the data in RAM can be swapped with data in the pagefile (virtual memory). The pagefile is normally kept in the C: drive but can be relocated - even to a dedicated partition.

There are pros and cons to partitioning and partitioning strategies.

There are sites such as www.tinypic.com to where you can upload pics, then note the bulletin board url in square brackets and then paste that into a post here to show pictures without directly uploading them here as attachments. For example:

[GeekyGirlfriend]

There are pros and cons to partitioning and partitioning strategies.

The article at the above link is excellent! It even specifically tells how to partition a multi-drive system for video editing - just what I needed to know. Also, the discussion about putting the OS on some drive other than C: was especially interesting and worthy of consideration.

Although the system is working fine now, it is not configured very efficiently for intensive tasks like video editing. After reading the article, I see that I definitely need to make some changes. My boyfriend just assumed that having the OS on the biggest, fastest drive would be the most efficient arrangement. It's a great help to know the logic behind partitioning strategies so I can create a system that fits his needs. Toward that end, I'll be doing a clean install of the OS onto a smaller partition on the new hard drive, with additional partitions for his massive video editing software, backup images, and non-essential software and data files. The other two drives will separate raw video from edited video. That configuration should work well for him.

Thank you so much for all your help! I'm truly grateful. :-)

[Mini-Me]

SATA and PATA drives do happily co-exist in the same system, but there can be setup and/or boot problems.

I have had the EXACT same problem with SATA and PATA(IDE) drives in the same machine. What would happen, was that when installing XP/2K, everything would go fine until the first offical reboot of the system, at which point, the system would complain with the "NTLDR is missing..." message.

What was happening, was that XP was putting the NTLDR on the first available legacy HDD it could find, assuming this to be the system drive, which was a data-drive set as the Primary-Master.

This then meant that the OS itself was on the SATA drive, but NTLDR telling it how to start loading the OS was on the primary-master IDE drive, and the system promptly falls over at that point.

I got around the problem, by unplugging ALL other HDD's except the SATA I was installing to. That done, XP installed fine, boots fine, and once I got to that point, reconnect all the other drives and reboot again. XP then sees all the other drives and set them up for me.

My default proceedure now with systems with more then one drive, especially if there is a mix of SATA and PATA, is to unplug all the other drives for the moment, and install the system with only one HDD in place, then reconnect the others once the system is running, as outlined above.

I'm intregued by your comment that you can't change the order of the HDD's. Any PC I have come across allows you to change the order of the SATA drives, and also allows you to force the SATA controller to emulate IDE mode for compatibility(if that is needed).
What is the make and model of your fella's motherboard?

EDIT: Whoops - noticed that this thread is getting a bit old - did not spot that before I posted this...

[Paul Komski]

I'm intregued by your comment that you can't change the order of the HDD's. Any PC I have come across allows you to change the order of the SATA drives, and also allows you to force the SATA controller to emulate IDE mode for compatibility(if that is needed).

Not sure which specific comment this relates to. I would however just say that (1) the boot device and the enumeration are not one and the same thing and (2) the way the BIOS enumerates hard drives is not in any sense always paralleled by how the OS in question enumerates them. Indeed similar OSes (such as Win2K v WinXP can enumerate them differently from one another). In a multi-drive scenario of any sort this can mean that for Win2K/WinXP the boot.ini on the system drive (as chosen as the boot device by the BIOS) can quite easily get things wrong. External drives can complicate the thing further. I have one system that is fine when no USB drives are attached but after selecting the correct boot.ini line when they are attached it tries to boot the incorrect drive. The work around for this was to find out the new correct rdisk value for boot.ini and add another line for WinXP (with USB attached)!

These are just some of the joys/complexities that multi-drive/multi-partition/multi-OS systems can throw up.

[Mini-Me]

It's all fun and games, eh?(rhetorical)