[plug] Big HDD in SFF PC

[Arie Hol]

On 9 Dec 2006 at 22:30, Nathan D wrote:

> Evening all,
> 
> Another quick and easy pc mission has turned into much frustration and 
I
> am now turning to the list for help.
> 
> I have a SFF ASUS P2L-N that has been running IPCop for my home
> firewall.  I was given a 20Gb laptop drive some time ago and it worked
> quite good until recently.  It had been dropped before it had been 
given
> to me so I was always unsure of it, but I got 2 1/2 years out of it 
before
> too many bad sectors became an issue.  An old 233 machine has been a
> temporary firewall while I have played around with the faulty hard 
drive.
> 
> Finally realising that hard drive is not able to be used I have
> purchased a new Seagate ST94813A 40GB 2.5" drive, but have had no joy 
with
> it.  I spent a long time trying different options in the BIOS to get 
the
> drive seen, but none have worked.  Seagate Disc Wizard software was 
loaded
> onto floppies and the drive was seen and partitioned ok.  All fixed :)
> 
> A quick install of IPCop 1.4.11 and all is looking good.  Eject the CD 
and
> reboot and all I still get is "DISK BOOT FAILURE, INSERT SYSTEM DISK 
AND
> PRESS ENTER".  By changing settings to 'Auto' in the BIOS I can make 
the
> machine hang while it tries to auto detect.
> 
> I know that I could probably find a way to boot from a floppy, but is
> there any way to make the new hdd work in this machine? The most 
current
> BIOS that I could find (1005) was loaded when I first got this machine. 

> The only options that I can see right now are either getting hold of a
> second hand smaller hdd, or maybe another (newer) SFF machine?
> 
> Easy solutions are being sought :)

>From the error message, I would say that the primary partition you are 
trying to boot from, is not set to 'active'.

I'm not sure about Linux systems, but on DOS/Windows systems you need to 
set the primary partition which contains the mbr to 'active'

Is the boot partition set to active ?

Regards Arie
------------------------------------------------------------------
 For the concert of life, nobody has a program.
------------------------------------------------------------------