aaronouthier
Explorer
- Joined
- Dec 31, 2014
- Messages
- 81
Ok, so I have a server system, specifically a Dell Poweredge 840. Latest bios revision. 4x 4 GB sata2 drives, 8 GB DDR2 ram - the most it supports, and a 16 GB CF card attached via an IDE to CF adapter. I went through quite a bit of trouble to beef-up this machine. Except. Except. EXCEPT!! I discovered after the fact that this server only supports booting from USB, IDE DVD drives, and SATA hard drives - there is absolutely no BIOS support for booting IDE hard drives!
Should I have checked this first? Yes. It's just that in 20 years of doing computer repair, I've never seen a computer that has an ATA/IDE bus, but can't boot a hard drive from it! At least, not until now.
Looking for ideas. I'd use a USB drive for booting, except that the whole reason I bought the CF card and adapter, is that I don't want a USB drive hanging out.
I would also rather not sacrifice a 4 TB drive for the FreeNAS boot drive.
I'm sure I could scrounge up a Floppy drive and have it redirect the boot up to the ATA port, if absolutely needed.
My ultimate question is:
How could I install a second copy of the boot loader onto a SATA drive, but keep the boot config files on the ATA drive?
Is this possible? I am comfortable using a command prompt, and I know how to access one from the FreeNAS install disk.
Help!
--Aaron
Should I have checked this first? Yes. It's just that in 20 years of doing computer repair, I've never seen a computer that has an ATA/IDE bus, but can't boot a hard drive from it! At least, not until now.
Looking for ideas. I'd use a USB drive for booting, except that the whole reason I bought the CF card and adapter, is that I don't want a USB drive hanging out.
I would also rather not sacrifice a 4 TB drive for the FreeNAS boot drive.
I'm sure I could scrounge up a Floppy drive and have it redirect the boot up to the ATA port, if absolutely needed.
My ultimate question is:
How could I install a second copy of the boot loader onto a SATA drive, but keep the boot config files on the ATA drive?
Is this possible? I am comfortable using a command prompt, and I know how to access one from the FreeNAS install disk.
Help!
--Aaron