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HDD in caddy... one will boot up.... 4 others won`t

shutter
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Registered: ‎06-11-2007

HDD in caddy... one will boot up.... 4 others won`t

Not sure if this is a hardware or software problem....but..
I have a caddy for external hdd.... I got this so that, if needed, I could boot up family laptops from an external hdd, to see if I could solve the problems for them...
I have 5 hdd`s with various forms of O.S on them... ( basically Mint, and Windows Vista ).. 4 are SATA drives, and one is PATA..
When I remove my internal HDD,... the following happens.....
The PATA drive, has Mint 15 on it... and WILL boot from the caddy...
Three of the other four (SATA) get the message "no bootable hard disk"...  one has Mint 15 on it... the other two have Vista.
The fourth one has Vista on it. This gets a 2 second "no bootable hard disk".. then proceeds to bot up... BUT.. then get a quick 1 second flash of the Blue Screen message...before cycling through the same boot procedure.
Strangely... this is the one I was having trouble with trying to get it formatted from Linux to Windows in another thread.. finally managing to foramat it with FAT32 and installing a working copy of Vista... This HDD DOES boot up as an INTERNAL HDD... (N.B..... the other SATA drives also boot up properly, when used as INTERNAL HDD)..
so, checking with the BIOS settings. when the above is happening....
PATA MINT hdd shows the USB Drive is first priority in boot up....
the three SATA drives do not show this option on the BIOS...
The last SATA drive that cycles thru... does show the USB Drive.
seems to me there is something missing from the "failure to boot" hdd`s... is it possible to add it ? or would it be "fixed" by re-formatting with FAT32 and re-installing the O.S
( I could update to MINT 18 on one, for example..)...
9 REPLIES 9
VileReynard
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Re: HDD in caddy... one will boot up.... 4 others won`t

There is no Mint 18 (yet).  Cheesy
What happens if you boot from some other source and then to read from this caddy?

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shutter
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Re: HDD in caddy... one will boot up.... 4 others won`t

If I use the Internal HDD... ( as normal )..  and have the caddy installed in a usb... all of the "spare" hdd`s show up on screen ( my computer) as drive E or F or whatever is next ... and all are capable of being "worked on".. i.e. transfer files... etc...
In actual fact, I am using the caddy to format one of those drives with exFAT  ( as recommended by strat, in the other thread !). as I type this....
VileReynard
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Re: HDD in caddy... one will boot up.... 4 others won`t

Does that count as fixed, then?  Tongue

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shutter
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Re: HDD in caddy... one will boot up.... 4 others won`t

No.. !  because I want them to boot up from the caddy... ( as if the "host" machine will not boot up from internal hdd ) to be able to access the host machine hdd without ( possibly unable to... ) removing the host hdd...
VileReynard
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Re: HDD in caddy... one will boot up.... 4 others won`t

USB is peculiar.
I've tried a disk in an enclosure (sold for backup purposes), but my PC won't boot from it.
However, if I boot a live distro (Linux) from a USB stick or DVD then I can mount the enclosure and run programs from it.
My guess is that if you hide SATA behind a USB interface, then it isn't seen as a bootable medium.

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Anonymous
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Re: HDD in caddy... one will boot up.... 4 others won`t

Check the SATA compatibility option in your BIOS if you have an AHCI option try that. If it is selected already try the IDE option.
shutter
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Re: HDD in caddy... one will boot up.... 4 others won`t

and so, Foxy, ... if you read my original post properly...you will see.. that having a SATA drive in the caddy, is read , even though you "think" it is hidden behind a usb... it is "seen" and the option of booting from USB is available, when the fourth hdd is in the caddy... it doesn`t boot completely, as I described, it cycles through a boot up, and a blue screen... but the option is there in the BIOS for that particular hdd... whereas it is not there for the other three SATA drives... 
clearly, there is something amiss. and that is what I am trying to sort out...
VileReynard
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Re: HDD in caddy... one will boot up.... 4 others won`t

Are they all MBR or is there a GPT drive in there?
Shouldn't make a difference - but who knows?  Cheesy
Do all the disks boot correctly on other machines?

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PeeGee
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Re: HDD in caddy... one will boot up.... 4 others won`t

What you haven't mentioned (I've only done a quick scan Roll_eyes ) is the sizes of the disks. Some "converters*" were unable to use disks larger than some arbitrary size though new devices should handle Logical Block Addressing (LBA) access needed for large disk access. The other question, if you know the answer: are any of the disks the newer 4k type which, as I found out,  XP cannot handle properly (though pre-partitioned and formatted disks are fine as long as you do not change things with disk mangler Shocked )? You will probably need to check the manufacturers spec to find out!
Phil
* I use the term as there is a conversion of signalling from USB to PATA/SATA which allows the computer to "see" the data (not the disk - that is processed by the "converter")
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