Scott Mueller's Upgrading and Repairing PCs Forum

Hi Scott

I have an issue with a 250Gb HD in a docking tray connected to my desktop PC via e-sata.
I am using it to back up with Acronis. My motherboard doesn’t support hot-swapping which means a re-boot to access e-sata.
On booting, the drive shows up in the start up screen but then ” NTLDR missing” and it just hangs.
The only way I have managed to get it to work ( and its hit and miss) is by switching on the power to the external drive just after I see the other drives listed on start up.

Interestingly I also have a Seagate Baracuda 1Tb drive which I can put into the same dock, same set up, and no other adjustments . My system boots up normally into Windows and there are no issues .

I have tried everything I can think of with the 250Gb drive. With jumper caps, without, checked BIOS settings ( LBA Large etc) but cant seem to work out the problem.

I am only guessing, but I think the 250Gb drive ( WD Caviar) may be a bit dated technically and doesn’t have any capability to work with my system like the Seagate does.

I would be very grateful for your advice.

Thank you

Paul

So you did a good job and narrowed the problem down to the drive. However I do still suspect configuration issues such as drive letter duplication, try using drive management to force the drive to a new letter high on the list (i.e. X, Y or Z). If that doesn't help then I suspect your conclusion of inherent incompatibility to be correct. I would check to see if your motherboard has a BIOS update available that might fix the issue. Let me know what you find, Scott.

Let me ask. Does that drive that's working fine have Acronis images on it?. What is your motherboard make and model?. I'm guessing the 250GB drive must have worked before because you said you are using it for Acronis images. To me it sounds like the OS is trying to boot from the drive. I suspect this because you say you can get it to work if you turn on the dock AFTER you see the other drives listed. There may be a different separate chipset controller for external sata drives and you may not be using the correct one. Maybe some change to the settings in the cmos setup will help.

Scott is the expert here though, but I figured I might as well throw my guess in. If anything I can learn why I'm wrong from Scott.

Hi Scott

Many thanks for the reply. I will get into computer management in Win 7 and try and change the drive letters. I forgot to ad last time that when I can successfully boot up with the drive in question visible, it is seen as a "D" drive. With the Seagate 1Tb its also assigned the same letter.

Paul

Hi FatGuy

Thanks for your input. Yes I do have Acronis back ups on the problem drive.
Motherboard is a Gigabyte EP41-UD3L.

Paul

Hi Scott

Just changed the drive letter as you said (from D to F) and it works fine. Put the newer Seagate into the dock and it also works fine with no issues. PC boots up normally into Windows 7 and I can back up as I did before. I also realized that my motherboard is over eight years old but is still working very well. Probably will upgrade when I go to the next version of Windows.

Many thanks.

Paul

Thanks for letting me know the solution, glad it all worked out! Scott.