no boot when second sata drive on

[pittendrigh]

Older Dell Optiplex gx620 bios A03 with Kubuntu installed on /dev/sda1

uname -a 3.2.0-68-generic-pae #102-Ubuntu SMP Tue Aug 12 22:23:54 UTC 2014 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux

When I plugged in a (second) Western Digital two terabyte Sata II drive fdisk -l did not find it.

So I rebooted into the bios setup
Under drives I found that second drive under port SATA2 -- so in the bios I turned its status to "on"

exit bios

Now the system will not boot at all. No sata drive is present in the boot sequence.

If i turn SATA2 off again I can boot just fine. But now fdisk -l no longer sees any /dev/sdb

[vinnywright]

go back to the BIOS and with the second drive turned back on look to see if you can set whitch drive is Arimary/boot and B:if you can chose whitch drive to boot ,,,,,,,set both(if their) to the original drive ,,,,,,,,,,,,when you "turn on" the second drive the BIOS is booting from it ,,,,,it would seem

VINNY

[Simon]

Sounds like an issue of BIOS device boot order. Look for it in the BIOS menus and tell it to boot the proper drive first. Once booting go into Partition Manager and check to see if it can see both drives. I use 2 drives myself and you need to edit /etc/fstab and add a new line to it.

For Example Only;
/dev/sdb1 /media/drive_d auto rw,auto,user,exec 0 0

This will then mount the drive automatically allowing you to read, write and execute programs on it.

[pittendrigh]

Yes I know how to deal with fstab. Once I get that far. Trouble is--even at the bios level--when I turn SATA2 to "on" the boot order menu suddenly sees no sata drives at all. SATA0 (the boot disk) suddenly shows up as "not present" ...SATA2 not present as well. When I turn SATA2 off SATA0 suddenly appears as present again in the boot order menu. This is an old box with not many bios options to play with. I have an old 500gig drive that works in that box. But not this (relatively) new 2 terabyte disk.

Thanks for the reply. I'll try some new cuss words. Perhaps that will help.

[otisklt]

Try swapping sata cables.

[Simon]

Thanks for the reply. I'll try some new cuss words. Perhaps that will help.

LOL yes computers can turn you into a proper sailor very quick.

I found here on this site, I assume you have the most updated BIOS version because you did say gx620 A03. But if you check the date on it and find otherwise you might want to update the BIOS.

Now the trouble with updating is of course they give you a Windows program and no Linux version. However at the very bottom they have a non Windows instructions. I am not sure I would want to run a DOS BIOS flash from a virtual DOS BOX any more than I would run it from WINE. Unless you know better, I just wouldn't want to risk that at all. A better solution would be to make a DOS boot floppy (my PCs don't even use floppies) and run the flash on it.

In the end, the motherboard may have issues with the drive. Is there a speed setting jumper on this drive? Some drives can be reduced for older systems.

Finally I did some searches and found this compatibility guide. I don't know if that will help.

[pittendrigh]

Thank you for those links. I think I will upgrade the bios. The compatibility guide looks useful and interesting too.

But I'm also beginning to think this is a defective drive. Kubuntu won't boot when it's plugged in. I have a Win7 box I use for IE website testing and it won't recognize the drive. Win7 still boots when this drive is plugged in. But it refuses to even see the drive. I have a drawer full of old hard drives, going back to the beginning of time. I pulled an old 500gig sata drive out of that drawer and it works just fine. So I think I'll package this drive up and send it back.

[Snowhog]

Sounds more like a drive setting issue: Master/Slave.

[pittendrigh]

I thought Sata drives are treated like an array, so master/slave has no bearing. ? I thought that was an IDE issue long gone. Perhaps not.

[Snowhog]

But what is the internal drive type in the PC?

[pittendrigh]

The existing boot drive is on port SATA0 .... I have two ten or so year old Dell machines. One (now) has the evil Win7. The other Kubuntu. They are physically much the same. I can put other drives in them but not this (brand new) SataII 2 terabyte drive I bought from Amazon. Doesn't work on either one. I'm no sysadmin. But I've been flopping drives in and out for a long time. I remember compiling Slackware Linux from source codes on a stack of 3-1/2" inch floppy drives, back in the mid 1990s. Took all day long. Seems like something's wrong.

[otisklt]

snowhog is leading to something... it does still matter depending on the SATA slots on the motherboard and how they are configured.
sometimes they have 2 slots set for an onboard raid and 2 for ide but the raid is usually optional.

check the bios or mobo manual maybe

[vinnywright]

The existing boot drive is on port SATA0 .... I have two ten or so year old Dell machines. One (now) has the evil Win7. The other Kubuntu. They are physically much the same. I can put other drives in them but not this (brand new) SataII 2 terabyte drive I bought from Amazon. Doesn't work on either one. I'm no sysadmin. But I've been flopping drives in and out for a long time. I remember compiling Slackware Linux from source codes on a stack of 3-1/2" inch floppy drives, back in the mid 1990s. Took all day long. Seems like something's wrong.

could it be a bios MB limit on the drive size ?

I remember back in the day having to install a EZbios on a drive to make it visible to a bios that had a limit (dont remember what it was) ,,,,,the drive was a HUGE (at the time) 50GB drive.

VINNY