| Disclaimer... if you don't want the back story (& my similar issue) just go down to the "***" for my suggestion to your problem.
Well, I just installed a 320GB Seagate Barracuda SATA/300 on my Dell Dimension 4600 last night - I added it as an additional drive to the master (PATA) 80GB WD that came with the computer...
Installed the drive - turned the SATA controllers on - formatted the drive using the Seagate disc management utility CD.
Worked fine... so I moved over something like 50GB of data from my original drive to the new drive... then deleted it from the old drive, ran disk defrag on the old HD and then rebooted to see how much it sped up the computer after freeing up some free disc space...
I had been as low as about 4GB free in the last couple weeks.
Anyway... once I rebooted it wouldn't get past the startup screen... it just sits - all black screen with the a cursor in the upper left corner of the screen... so I reboot go into setup and turn off the SATA drive and it boots just fine.
***
I read somewhere when I started figuring out what I wanted to do that a SATA drive will only work as the boot drive on a Dell D4600.
Not sure if that is what the OP's issue is or not... but now I'm trying to figure out what I can do to fix my issue.
I will look for the webpage that outlined the SATA boot drive issue...
Should I start a new thread or can I ask for help with my issue here?
Does anyone know the easiest fix for my issue? Can I just remove the 80GB and make the SATA drive my boot drive? That means I have to install WinXP onto the new drive then right? If I do this will I lose the stuff I already put on the drive?
Do I need the SATA drivers loaded on a 3.5 to do this?
If so - where can I get drivers for my motherboard? I can't even tell what motherboard I have... I look on the thing and all it really says is "DELL"... no other names or brands.
Any help would be great - thanks-
Justin  |