Hard drive upgrade problem

Factual Questions
1

I have an EEE Box B206, which is basically a netbook in a desktop enclosure (Atom N270 processor, 160GB 2.5" HDD). I’ve made several attempts to replace the hard drive with a 500GB drive and failed completely.

First I backed up the PC onto my Windows Home Server, and tried to use the WHS recovery disk. It got to the hard drive partitioning utility, and it saw the new 500GB drive, but when I created a 500GB partition and started to format it, the drive disappeared from the listing and was not recognized by the partitioning utility anymore.

So I connected the new drive to my other computer, made a 500GB partition and formatted it, then installed it in the EEE Box and ran the WHS recovery, this time skipping the partitioning utility. It started the restore process and then crashed.

Next thing I tried was to install Acronis TrueImage, connect the new drive by USB (one of those “toaster” adapters) and clone the hard drive; I cloned the original 160GB drive to a 160GB partition on the 500GB drive. The cloning process was successful. When I installed the cloned 500GB drive and attempted to boot from it, Windows starts booting up (showing the startup screen) but crashes and reboots itself before getting to the login screen.

Finally I decided to just attempt a clean install using a Windows XP Home installation disk (with SP3). The setup program found the 500GB drive and the 160GB partition on it (from the previous step). I then told it to delete the 160GB partition; immediately it said it can’t access the disk.

Thinking perhaps the XP install disk is missing the SATA drive, I made a bootstrapped (is that the term?) disk using nLite and making sure the ICH7M (I think) driver is added as a text mode driver. Same result.

As a last resort I made a Windows-7 RC disk and attempted to do a clean install. It started formatting the 500GB drive and then stopped. I forget the exact error message but it was something about not being able to access the disk.

Also, for the first few steps at least, I tried two different 500GB drives (I had bought two, the other is intended for upgrading my laptop) and got the same exact results, so I don’t think it’s a defective drive.

What else is there left to try???

2

Not familiar with the specific hardware in question, so I’ll just offer up a generic SATA suggestion.

Go into your bios and see if there are options for SATA operation. The machine I have here next to me has options for AHCI, ATA, and Legacy. Those are in order of preference of use. It may be that the drive you have doesn’t support the mode you’re currently configure for and you’ll need to change it.

Luck!

3

You almost certainly need to do one of two things: either add the SATA driver to the WHS recovery CD or go into the BIOS and set the SATA mode to Compatible.

4

Thanks. I’ll have to check the BIOS settings when I get home. I don’t remember there being a Legacy/Compatible option, but I may have missed it. (I did check to see the drive was detected.)

I copied all the drivers from the backup and provided it to the WHS recovery program via a flash memory card. I’d think that included the SATA driver. Also I did provide the driver in the XP install disk, why didn’t that work?

5

Hmm… I don’t see the familiar AHCI, ATA etc. choice in the BIOS. Instead are these settings:

Type [Auto]
LBA/Large Mode [Auto]
Block(Multi-Sector Transfer) M [Auto]
PIO Mode [Auto]
DMA Mode [Auto]
SMART Monitoring [Auto]
32Bit Data Transfer [Disabled]

That’s way too many settings to start changing randomly. It also says in the greyed out area:

Device :Hard Disk
Vendor :WDC WD5000BEVT-22ZAT0
Size :500.1GB
LBA Mode :Supported
Block Mode :16Sectors
PIO Mode :4
Async DMA :MultiWord DMA-2
Ultra DMA :Ultra DMA-6
SMART Monitoring : Supported

So presumably these are the settings currently in use. Any ideas which parameter may be the culprit?

6

p.s. I put the original 160GB drive back in, and the BIOS info is exactly the same (except for the vendor and size, of course). The BIOS is finding the exact same DMA, PIO, etc modes. I don’t see why I can’t clone the partition between these drives and have them work the same way…

7

It’s not you. Your machine has major bellyaches with certain 500 gig drives.
See link

8

Thanks for finding the link!

But this is ^$#* frustrating - there seems to be no reliable info on which drives definitely work, and why. Arrgh.

9

I would bet they have not prorperly implemented the BIOS drive handling code to some degree. Do you have the lastest BIOS version update for this machine?