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darrenw1967
07-11-2003, 03:59 PM
I have been running a seagate serial ata drive as main boot & a maxtor 7200 80 gig drive as back up for a while & I am about to remove the maxtor & install a second seagate to run raid, but every time I remove the maxtor & try to boot up to format the seagate to install XP again I get the message NTLDR is missing press Ctrl+Alt+Del to restart, it will not even let me boot from a boot floppy to reformat the drive, any ideas?

Asus A7n8x
Windows XP pro
Swordfish
07-11-2003, 04:07 PM
if you have a boot floppy then first change the sequence in BIOS so that the system boots from A: and then hdd.

Have you removed the OS from the main/boot drive?If not, then attach the second drive, remove any floppies from the FDD and then boot your system. Try the format inside XP.
fishybawb
07-11-2003, 04:14 PM
Sounds like maybe the jumper's set wrongly on the Seagate. Try setting it as master, or failing that remove it all together. I'm sure BpB will set us straight on that if he's around :)
darrenw1967
07-11-2003, 04:25 PM
Bios is set to boot from A first then the HDD, but no boot up from boot floppy & there is no jumpers on the seagate as it is serial ata only primary & secondary channels ( only 1 drive per channel) any other ideas?
Swordfish
07-11-2003, 04:25 PM
oh...i forgot you said you were installin XP again.

if the drives are properly detected then why not insert the XP CD and just format it durin install...you won't need to worry about a boot disk in that case.
darrenw1967
07-11-2003, 04:29 PM
It will not let me reinstall the os from boot disk or cd just keeps giving this message, if I reattach the maxtor the problem goes away, then remove it & its back again, also it will not let me format the maxtor drive from within XP either.
BipolarBill
07-11-2003, 08:22 PM
Your BIOS has been set to boot from the wrong drive since day one. The WinXP drive is not C, but the bootfiles are on C ... the Maxtor. When you remove it, you remove the bootfiles.

You're basically screwed. Since you can't RAID an existing OS anyway, it doesn't matter. Take out the Max, set up the drives, make your array and install.