Boot issue after upgrade

[GlimmerMan]

I've just built a kickass new system which at stock speeds and no tweaking is ranked 139th in 3D Mark 2005 and 103rd in 3D Mark 2003 - Life is good then? NO! I'm having a bastard of a problem trying to get one of my old drives back in to this new system.

I've replaced two older drives with WD Raptors. I made a fresh XP install on one of the raptors and am now in the process of trying to copy some 90GB of files from my old WD Caviar on to the two new raptors.

The setup:

CH0 Master = 250GB Maxtor
CH0 Slave = 250GB Maxtor
CH1 Master = DVD-ROM
CH1 Slave = 123GB WD Caviar (currently not connected)
CH2 Master = 74GB Raptor (SATA)
CH3 Master = 74GB Raptor (SATA)

OK, so currently the CH1 Slave drive is not connected and windows boots from the CH2 Master fine. When I connect the 123GB drive up the PC always tries to boot from it (My old windows install is on it), of course resulting in a BSOD and reset.

The annoying thing is in the bios I have the boot order set as:

1: CH0 Master
2: CH2 Master (New Windows install)
3: CH3 Master
4: CH0 Slave
5: CH1 Slave (Old Windows install)
6: CH1 Master

Clearly my new windows install is on the CH2 Master ranks well above the old install on the CH1 Slave in the boot order, yet the bios seems to ignore this fact and boot in channel order (0M, 0S, 1M, 1S, 2M, 3M) no matter what I tell it!

The is an option on boot where if I press F11 I can manually pick the drive to boot from. I've tried doing this and when I manually pick the CH2 Master the PC just sits at "Verifying DMI Pool Data..." forever.

Does anybody know what I can do to resolve this issue? The old windows install on the offending drive is no longer required, if I was to put the drive in my dads XP SP2 as a CH1 Slave (he boots off of his CH0 Master drive so wouldn't get the same issue I do) is there a way I could remove the booting property from the drive and make it act as a normal data drive again without losing data so that I could put it back inb my PC and access the data on it?

Processor:
AMD FX55
Operating System:
Windows XP Pro, SP2
Mobo:
MSI K8N Neo 4 Diamond
RAM:
2x512MB Corsair XMS3200XL Pro 2-2-2-5
Video:
2xGeForce 6800 Ultra (SLI)
Storage:
2x74GB WD Raptor, 2x250GB Maxtor, 123GB WD Caviar
Audio:
Audigy 2 + Creative Inspiron 6700 6.1 Surround
Power:
600W Enermax Noisetaker

[Seahorse]

Have an similar issue when setting up RAID here after format. BIOS seems to 'forget' boot order.

Not only is ther a boot Priotity order - i.e. Floppy, CD, IDE HD & so on.
There is another option burried in the BIOS which says Boot from IDE or RAID first (words to that effect).

This one resets to IDE after formatting - no idea why, and then you FUBAR install if you don't notice (I want to boot from a RAID partiton). Plus all your drive letters go tits up - booting from D: and all sorts of bloody nonsense. First time it caught me out I formatted my data drive which happened to have same capacity at the boot partition - Arrrrgggghhhhhh.......

[mid_gen]

On my Abit AA8XE Fatal1ty mobo, there are actually two seperate boot orders. One for the mobo BIOS, and one for the SATA controller.

[Sam]

Might seem obvious but is there a bios update for your board? What board is it?

Try posting on Overclockers.co.uk forum there usually pretty handy.

Sam

[LazyManc]

If it's just simply a case of getting the data off it, why not leave it in your dad's machine and copy it over the network? Then format the drive before putting it back in your machine.

[GlimmerMan]

In the end I was able to boot the old windows install in safe mode and copy all of the data off of the drive and then format it.