SATA in Dell 2350

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jay_m

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I have a customer who doesn't want to upgrade his front computer. The old hard drive failed so I am now trying to reinstall on a new drive.

I purchased a PCI SATA controller to install a new SATA drive. The issue that I am having is getting the computer to boot to the drive connected on the controller card.

If there are no IDE drives connected, the BIOS does not allow me to set the machine to boot from the controller. I read tips on the internet that say to install an IDE and set the BIOS to boot from the controller then immediately remove the IDE drive. This has not worked for me.

I have tried two different controller cards and have had the same results. I got windows installed by slipstreaming the drivers into his windows install cd so I know that the controller and drive work. I just need some way of getting the machine to boot to the connected drive.

Any ideas of what I can do? The machine is a Dell 2350. One thing I was thinking was to make a boot CD since the machine will boot from disk with no problems. Is this possible?

Thanks for any help at all.

P.S. Please don't tell me to get the customer to upgrade his machine, he won't.
 
Why don't you just install an IDE drive ?

Seems like you are making more work for yourself than you need to.
 
My reasoning is to future proof. At some point in time the computer will fail again and he will want his data from it. It will be easier to pull from a SATA than IDE at that time.

I can install an IDE but I prefer to use a controller card on older computers.
 
jay_m said:
My reasoning is to future proof. At some point in time the computer will fail again and he will want his data from it. It will be easier to pull from a SATA than IDE at that time.

I can install an IDE but I prefer to use a controller card on older computers.
Click to expand...

Well, I would not waste time doing it. Put an IDE drive in there, bill the guy and move on. The guy doesn't want to upgrade from a ancient machine and I am sure he is not paying you for all your efforts to come up with some weirdo fix.
 
NYJimbo, thanks for the effort. I know I can install an IDE. I am asking if anyone has an idea on how to get the machine to boot from the drive connected to the controller card.
 
One is a Syba PCI SATA150 card with SIL3512 chipset. It show up in the BIOS, but after the POST.

The other is a generic SATA card with VIA VT6421A chipset. This one does not show up in the BIOS.
 
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Try different slot ... Done

Check PCI settings...No PCI options

Try Different HDD.... Will do.

If no one has any options on how to boot the PC from a controller card whenever the BIOS will not boot it I guess I will put an IDE in the machine. Let me know.

Thanks Everyone.
 
jay_m said:
My reasoning is to future proof. At some point in time the computer will fail again and he will want his data from it. It will be easier to pull from a SATA than IDE at that time.

I can install an IDE but I prefer to use a controller card on older computers.
Click to expand...

Seems to me that you are making too much additional work for yourself here. I didn't see anywhere that you checked for an updated BIOS for this computer. I'd got with the IDE drive and when this client's computer fully dies he will little or no choice to move to whatever is the most current hardware.

I use a Dell 2350 for hard drive testing and have removed the Hard drive (IDE) from the boot listing (from BIOS). This way it never looks for the internal-attached IDE hard drive and always boots to whatever is listed first in the list - in my case an IDE CD-ROM drive.
 
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jay_m said:
My reasoning is to future proof. At some point in time the computer will fail again and he will want his data from it. It will be easier to pull from a SATA than IDE at that time.

I can install an IDE but I prefer to use a controller card on older computers.
Click to expand...

If you wanted to future proof you'd have told him to get a new PC instead of trying to shoehorn a SATA drive into a PC that is so old it doesn't have SATA ports i.e. more than 10 or 11 years old. How do you future proof somthing that was obsolete 7 or 8 years ago?

It's simple - you call him back and say "Hi Jack. That fix I was trying isn't going to work. Unfortunately you now only have two choices - get an IDE drive for $xx or replace the P.C. Which would you like me to do?"

Sometimes your job is to NOT give the customer what he wants, it's to TELL him what he needs and then be prepared to walk away if he still says no.
 
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Thanks for the comments. Guys, please understand I have tried to get him to upgrade. He has some strange emotional attachment to this PC, even named it Bertha.

I was trying to go with the SATA drive to avoid ordering any parts, I needed to be able to deliver the PC tomorrow, to be able to get his info off better in the future and because I can get SATA's cheaper.

@Altster
I did check to update the BIOS, it is most current version, back in 2003 i think.

I will either order an IDE or perhaps the converter recommended by johnrobert
 
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