Boot from SATA Drive using AwardBIOS

smerrima · n00b Joined: 16 Mar 2004 Posts: 47 Location: Boise, ID

Hi all,

I have been booting from an IDE drive for a while now but I also have a 250GB SATA drive where all my files are stored and whatnot.

Anyway, I want to remove the IDE drive and boot from my SATA drive. I went to change the BIOS but the closest setting I could find for "Boot devices" was SCSI which didn't work.

Has anyone set this up recently and remember what they have done?

Thanks!
_________________
-Seth

Keruskerfuerst · Posted: Sat Aug 05, 2006 8:00 pm Post subject:

Look for something like "Boot Priority" or check "first boot device".

smerrima · n00b Joined: 16 Mar 2004 Posts: 47 Location: Boise, ID

Thanks. I did that, but the options for boot device do not contain SATA.
_________________
-Seth

cyrillic · Posted: Sat Aug 05, 2006 10:38 pm Post subject:

Assuming you have a bootloader installed on the SATA drive, you should be able to just unplug the IDE drive, and try booting.

Most BIOSes have an option to "try other devices" if your first 3 choices do not work.

smerrima · n00b Joined: 16 Mar 2004 Posts: 47 Location: Boise, ID

Grub is installed on the SATA drive. I unplugged it and gave it a shot. Didn't boot

.
_________________
-Seth

cyrillic · Posted: Sat Aug 05, 2006 11:11 pm Post subject:

Is your SATA controller on a separate card ? or is it part of the motherboard ?

If it is a separate card, then it should have its own SATA BIOS that allows you to configure it for booting.

smerrima · n00b Joined: 16 Mar 2004 Posts: 47 Location: Boise, ID

Another thing to note. My motherboard is an A78NX-X so it does not have built in SATA. I had to buy an adapter which connects through pci. Could this be a problem?
_________________
-Seth

cyrillic · Posted: Sat Aug 05, 2006 11:36 pm Post subject:

One of my machines has a Western Digital SATA add-on card, and during the boot sequence, it shows "Press ctrl-F to enter configuration utility" or something like that.

Does your SATA card even show up while booting ?
Maybe it is not configured correctly.

smerrima · n00b Joined: 16 Mar 2004 Posts: 47 Location: Boise, ID

I don't see anywhere to configure the SATA controller. I am using a Promise SATA TX2 PCI controller card.
_________________
-Seth