SATA drive went bad - can it be slaved? 1

[LizzyK]

I have a Dell Dimension E510 with a 160 Gbyte Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 SATA drive which apparently went bad. Was up and running and on this site when suddenly got a blue screen saying a problem had been detected and windows has shut down. This is what came up on the blue screen:

DRIVER_IRQ_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL
It goes on to tell me to remove any newly installed hardware or software and try Safe Mode.
The tech information is:
STOP: 0x00000001 (0x00000028, 0x00000002, 0x00000000, 0xF73B388A)
iastor.sys - Address F73B387A base at F73A000, Date Stamp 42b2df42

I tried unhooking my printer and starting in safe mode and going to the last known good configuration, but the same thing happens whatever I do. The computer is fairly new, and has a second drive and ghost on it to back up to the second drive, however I went out on maternity leave right after I got it and never got the chance to set up the ghost. I was planning on doing it this week now that I am back, however the computer went down Monday morning.
I spent hours on line with a guy from tech support who clearly knows less about computers than I and eventually told me to call Nortorn even though I told him I had never used the Ghost.

Here is the real issue. I need to get the data off the drive onto another computer so I can get some work done. I figured I would just take the drive out, slave it to another computer, get my data off of it and then let whatever be done to fix the problem after. Have done this a number of times with IDE drives, but not SATA.

I hooked the drive up to another machine and enabled it in the BIOS, but when I start the computer automatically seems to boot from my disk and gives me the same error as I was getting on my machine. The jumper block on the drive has a note on it saying it is for factory use only and does not indicate setup for Master, Slave, etc. as IDE drives do. Is there any way to do what I want to do?

 

[Johnthephoneguy]

On the second computer you connected it to, did you go into the BIOS setup and check the boot order, so it does not look at the sata for the boot?

JohnThePhoneGuy

"If I can't fix it, it's not broke!

 

[LizzyK]

I wasn't sure if is should because the 'master' drive in the second computer is also SATA. Before I put the disk I wanted to slave in the boot order read like this:
1.Onboard or USB Floppy drive
2.Onboard SATA Hard Drive
3.Onboard IDE Hard Drive (not present)
4.Onboard or USB CD-ROM Drive
5.Add-in Hard Drive (not present)
6.Add-in Hard Drive (not present)

I didn't change it at all, but I noticed when I went back in the BIOS after I couldn't get it to work the boot order had changed to this...
1.Onboard or USB Floppy drive
2.Onboard SATA Hard Drive (not present)
3.Onboard IDE Hard Drive (not present)
4.Onboard or USB CD-ROM Drive
5.S73160828AS
6.Intel array

It seems like it is not seeing the onboard SATA when I enable the one I added in...

 

[Freestone]

In SATA there are no Master or Slave devices. Each device is independent.

From looking at the new boot order, my guess is the system you put your drive into has two SATA controllers, and the controller you connected your drive to is a RAID controller, which has assumed SATA operations. Look where the original SATA drive is plugged into the motherboard and see if any empty SATA plugs are near it, the idea being plugging your drive into one of these will plug it into the same SATA controller as the original drive. Again, all guesswork on my part.

and enabled it in the BIOS

What did you enable in BIOS?

 

[LizzyK]

There are only two SATA controller on the motherboard, the one that the original disk is plugged into, which is blue and marked SATA 0, and the one that I plugged mine into which is marked SATA 2 and is black. I see no others.

When I first plugged my drive into the SATA I did not change anything in the setup and the drive was not seen by the operating system at all, not even in disk mangement. I then went into setup and under drives I am given 6 options:
Diskette drive
drive 0: SATA-0
drive 1: SATA-2
drive 2: PATA-0
drive 3: PATA-1
SATA Operation

If I enter the drive 1: SATA-2 option I get as screen like this:

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Drive 1: SATA- 2

ON OFF
___________________________________
This allows the user to enable or disable an ATA or SATA device (such as a hard drive , CD drive, or DVD drive)

OFF = The enterface is disable and an attached device is not usabale

ON = the interface is enabled and an attached device is usable.

________________________________________

The factory default setting is ON

Controller details:

* Controller = Serial ATA
* Port = SATA-2

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I went in and swithced the interface to ON and then tried to reboot. That is when I encountered the same error as when the disk was in my computer.

This morning I went into the SATA operations screen and got this:
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

RAID autodetect/ATA RAID on
_________________________________________________________
This field configures the operating mode of the integrated hard drive controller.

RAID Autodetect/ATA = RAID if signed drives otherwise ATA

RAID on = SATA is configured for RAID on every boot
_______________________________________________________

The factory default setting is RAID Autodetect/ATA

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I thought maybe if I swithed it to RAID on, but when I went to do that I got a message that said:

Attention! Changing this setting may preent your operating system from booting or require a reinstall. ARe you sure you would like to continue?

I did not, because I was not sure what I was doing and the last thing I need is another computer that does'nt work!

 

[Freestone]

Okay, sounds like you've done everything correctly so far. And you are correct in not enabling RAID.

Did you also happen to look at the drive 0: SATA-0 settings to be sure it was still enabled? Also make sure you didn't dislodge its data and power cables when itstalling your failing drive into SATA-2.

 

[LizzyK]

Cables are checked and rechecked and SATA-0 is still enabled. If I go back into setup and disable SATA-2 again the first disk goes back to working fine.

I did however make a mistake in my first posting. There were two hard disks in my orginal computer, but they were set up to mirror with RAID, I am not sure if that has something to do with my difficulties...

 

[Johnthephoneguy]

A HD that you have set up and used in a raid situation will not be able to be used as a single HD and expect the data to be there. in other words, yes you can take a drive out of a raid and reformat it to be used as a single drive, you just can't expect the HD to have any info from the Raid set up on it.



JohnThePhoneGuy

"If I can't fix it, it's not broke!

 

[Freestone]

Hold on there John. This drive was in a RAID1 configuration (mirroring) so I wouldn't be so hasty in saying it can't be used on its own. Granted any RAID that uses striping would not allow single drive operation without its partner(s), but mirroring is not the same. The fact that the drive boots means the data on it is readable.

Ah, the RAID signature on the added drive is why the system isn't booting as you expect. Read your RAID Autodetect description again:

RAID Autodetect/ATA = RAID if signed drives otherwise ATA

BIOS is seeing your added drive's RAID1 signature and switching to RAID mode!

Two alternatives come to mind now:

1) Place the drive back into the original system. Go into its RAID BIOS and break the mirror set. This hopefully would remove the RAID signature and allow you to place it back into the working system and have it boot as you desire.

2) Change the boot order in your working system so it boots off CD first. Create a Knoppix CD (

http://www.knopper.net/knoppix/index-en.html),

boot from it and see if Knoppix sees both drives and try to get your data that way.

 

[LizzyK]

I was able to boot with the Knoppix (great product!) cd and see my drives. Luckily I was able to retrieve most of the data I needed. Thanks so much for your help, I really appreciate it!

 

[Freestone]

Great! I am happy that you were able to retrieve your data. And many thanks for reporting back.