SATA Drive - Setting boot priority

Hi Pearson:

My problem is as the subject indicates, how to set boot priority order among
physical SATA drives and not the OS drive(partition) name being C: or not,
although I had to mention drive name in my responses.

You suggest disabling Disk1 and so on but the problem is that the system BIOS
appears to have no control over SATA drives, and the SATA controller's BIOS is
just for setting up or deleting RAID system and nothing else. Disk0, Disk1
among others in a list of devices for boot drive order setting on the system
BIOS screen mean only regular IDE drives. I can set the boot priority to be
disk1 and disk0 in ordr *as shown on the system BIOS screen* but this is
ignored and the system boots to an OS in the channel #1 SATA disk or channel #2
SATA disk if the channel #1 SATA disk is unplugged.

Kaz Honjo

Hi Pete

What I may try is installing PATA because I still have a faint hope that I can
set boot priority between PATA and SATA group drives. After all using PATA
drives seems to be only way with this mobo to realize a multi-boot system the
way I want. Then what do I do with the SATA disks? Using SATA drives as DATA
drives? It does not sound right.

Now I understand your secret of how to catch a new post quickly. I noticed that
you responded very quickly to my post in a past thread which was placed about
two weeks after the thread activity subsided.
I am still using older version of Netscape newsreader so I do not think I can do
as you are doing.

Thank for the info.

Kaz Honjo

Hi Kaz

It's certainly worth trying to set the boot priority between PATA and SATA
drives... there isn't a reason that I know of why this shouldn't work...
(but with Asus and that controller who knows?)

As for the SATA drives... you could always stripe the two drives into an
array (RAID 0) and basically create an extended version (240Gb) of what you
already have on your primary SATA drive (3 OS's as I recall) - should also
be a performance boost to some degree. It'll behave as one hard drive,
partitioned as you require, and you should be able to boot into whichever OS
partition you want.

Over to you
Pete
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Hi Kaz,

If system BIOS have no control over the drives, I believe you will have to
boot from an OS in the channel #1 SATA disk or channel #2 SATA disk if the
channel #1 SATA disk is unplugged. The disk connected to the channel #1 is
higher boot priority and cannot be changed.

Best Regards,

Pearson Peng,
Microsoft Online Support
Get Secure! - www.microsoft.com/security
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

Hi Pearson:

Thank you for your response.
I should have clearly stated in my previous post that I had confirmed with
vendor of the mobo that my problem could not be solved(It is reported in my
post in other branch of this thread). So what you described is indeed what I
can do with those two SATA drives.

Kaz Honjo

Hi Kaz,

Sorry for my ignorance on your post. I have carefully checked it and found
the information. I really appreciate your efforts and time.

Have a great weekend!

Pearson Peng,
Microsoft Online Support
Get Secure! - www.microsoft.com/security
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

Hi Pearson:

Not a problem. Thanks for your efforts to help me.

Kaz Honjo

Pearson Peng wrote:

Hi Kaz,

Sorry for my ignorance on your post. I have carefully checked it and found
the information. I really appreciate your efforts and time.

Hi Pete:

I have installed a PATA drive and found that boot priority could be set between
the PATA drive and a group of the two SATA drives by adjusting SCSI position in
the boot order. Now I have a new problem with SATA after having seen how SATA
drives behave when the system boots to the PATA drive. I am going to initiate a
new thread with a subject name of "SATA controller disabled if booted from IDE".

As to RAID, I have come to realize that this mobo is intended ONLY for RAID.
The reason I got this mobo is SATA support but my choice of this mobo appears a
mistake. I am not interested in RAID0 because of reduced reliability but I may
try RAID1 in the future.

See you at a new thread.

Kaz Honjo

Hi Kaz

OK... I wait and see what you post about this new issue..

As for the RAID0, well it's entirely up to you of course.... The RAID1 may
be worthwhile since it'll give you the back-up mirroring of the primary SATA
drive...

I still think, though, that it might be worthwhile experimenting with the
Silicon Image SATALink controller... I don't remember if you've tried that
at any time.....

Anyway... see you at the new thread.
Pete
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