"Invalid" system disk...."

thewolfe · Post by **thewolfe** » Fri Jun 11, 2004 5:18 pm

"Invalid" system disk...."

I installed a second Maxtor 5T040H4 HD. The specs say that I don't need to set a jumper to make it a slave.

When I bootup I get the following message: "Searching for Boot record from Floppy..Not found
Saerching for Boot record from IDE-1..OK

Invalis System disk
Replace the disk and then press any ket."

So I press any key and the computer boots and I can see the "Slave".

What's up w/ the message?

Krom · Post by **Krom** » Fri Jun 11, 2004 5:35 pm

Make sure the other drive is set to Master and the new drive is set to slave (probably the factory default setting from the sound of it). If the orignal drive is a western digital they have a setting for master w/slave present, you should set it like that.

thewolfe · Post by **thewolfe** » Fri Jun 11, 2004 5:51 pm

It's a Seagate and there is a setting for master/ slave which I tried without success.

I also went into the BIOS and then back out again in case that was something I needed to do.

Grendel · Post by **Grendel** » Fri Jun 11, 2004 6:02 pm

Sounds like cable selection to me -- swap the IDE connectors, ie. connect the new drive to the one your boot drive is connected to and connect the boot drive to the former free one. leave the disk M/S selection at auto.

thewolfe · Post by **thewolfe** » Fri Jun 11, 2004 6:10 pm

Switched cables still same problem.

Max_T · Post by **Max_T** » Fri Jun 11, 2004 6:18 pm

what motherboard u got?

if you are absolutely positive that u hooked everything up right, then check the BIOS out..

on my ic7 and now on my ic7-max3 there is a hard drive booting priority setting, which allows me to pick a main hard drive...basically i had the same setup as u, one master with OS installed, and i installed a slave drive...but in the BIOS the slave drive had teh boot priority for some reason...and the system wasn't booting, so i had to change priority back to the master, although physically everything was hooked up right.

Jagger · Post by **Jagger** » Fri Jun 11, 2004 7:17 pm

Floppy in the floppy drive?

May sound stupid, but that stumped a whole lab full of engineers at my work once.

KompresZor · Post by **KompresZor** » Fri Jun 11, 2004 8:39 pm

Jagger wrote:Floppy in the floppy drive? May sound stupid, but that stumped a whole lab full of engineers at my work once.

That was my first thought

thewolfe · Post by **thewolfe** » Fri Jun 11, 2004 8:53 pm

No floppy unfortunatley.

Capm · Post by **Capm** » Fri Jun 11, 2004 11:17 pm

Well, cabling and master slave settings aside... You have to partition and format the drive before it will work, you have done that... right?

thewolfe · Post by **thewolfe** » Sat Jun 12, 2004 8:59 am

Sorry for the lack of information.

I was using this drive is a slave on another computer. It has data on it and I can read once the computer boots up.

I'm going to get some more information on Seagate.

Krom · Post by **Krom** » Sat Jun 12, 2004 9:55 am

Might be worth trying cable select.

thewolfe · Post by **thewolfe** » Tue Jun 15, 2004 5:10 pm

OK, here's the deal.

After switching jumpers, cables, and anything else I can think of with no success, I went back into the BIOS again.

Under "Advanced Settings", I found that a second Boot Device which was the hard drive was set to "Second IDE-HDD" instead of the "First IDE-HDD.

The computer now boots up with the master and slave both working.

This was a machine I inherited and most likely was set up this way from the beginning.

Thanks for all the help and suggestions.