Problem with Serial ATA and Chaintech 7NJS

[weedenbc]

I just got a new Chaintech 7NJS and a WD Raptor Serial ATA drive. I had to install win2k on a standard IDE drive since win2k couldn't detect the serial controller. I am now trying to use Partition Magic to copy it to he serial ATA drive. However, when I start up Partition Magic 6 I get an error saying the partition table is messed up. But if I disable the serial ATA controller in the BIOS it works just fine and I can manipulate the stanard ATA drive. When enabled the Serial ATA controler is installer properly according to the manual and looks fine under device manager.

Any suggestions? I know the drive itself is working - if I go into the RAID setup util on boot I can see it detected properly. But seems that Win2k is having problems.

 

[KF]

I'll skip over the possible RAID. People say to make sure RAID is turned off if you are not using RAID.

I have fooled with a lot of partitions (my primary drive on my main computer has 14 partitions) and had complaints from PM about partitions and even had PM refuse to do anything on that account. Evidently this comes from using several different partitioning programs. If you partitioned your drive with a different partitioner, that could be your problem.

Most recently, I used MaxBlast, the Maxtor HD setup utility, to initially partition a new HD. PM8 refused to do any repartitioning because it said the HD had a disk overlay that had not been loaded. Geez, that's why I have PM; so I can blow away partiitions among other things: and it won't do it? MaxBlast had an option to get rid of a disk overlay, but it was grayed out. As far as MaxBlast was concerned there was no overlay there. Elsewhere MaxBlast had an option to write zeros to the first sector. Since that is where an overlay program would be, that option would get rid of a supposed overlay (and it also wipe any partitioning information.)

Anyway, if you got a setup program with the HD, you should look for something likethat to blow away the partioning info. (Or you can download these from their sites.) Maybe PM will like it. Make sure your partitioning is acceptable to PM if you ever want to use it to repartition.

I think you should have been able to install Windows 2K on the SATA drive and controller. You probably need to set the BIOS to boot the drive on the SATA controller. The 2K installer does ask you to press F6 if you need to load a driver, does it not? (That's the way XP is.) You need to get the driver for the SATA controller onto a floppy.
You can run into odd problems if you tranfer W2K to a different drive than it was installed on, so the direct method will be less grief if you can do it.

What just happened to me tranferring XP to a new drive was that the drive letters got all screwed up. XP IDs the partitions somehow internally or externally. If the second drive was D: when you copied XP to it, it is liable to end up still having the drive letter D: when you move it to being the first drive, after XP boots. OTOH my situation was much more complicated than that, so it may not happen to you. Really, if the partitions are copied whole and exactly, the ID should be copied identically.

If you copy the partitions, you still have to get the W2K MBR on the new HD. Assuming it is the same as XP, boot the W2K installer. Go to Recovery Console. Type FIXMBR. And maybe FIXBOOT. Type HELP to get a full list of console commands. Type the command followed by a ? to get a list of options for the commands.