Board logo

Hard Drive Problem?
coozer - 26/8/13 at 04:50 PM

I have my OS on a new SSD, been in there about a year now.

I have 2 other HDD's in the case and a removable HDD on top.

Now occasionally the PC doesnt see the SSD on boot and gives me a message saying BOOTMNG IS MISSING.

When I power down and go into the bios I find the SSD has moved down to the bottom of the list for the boot order. I move it back to the top and it boots OK.

Then the problem re-occurs about once every 10 days on average.

Any ideas whats causing this, and, is it worth me replacing the other HDD's with one massive drive?

britishtrident - 26/8/13 at 05:44 PM

You need to replace the CMOS battery on the motherboard usually a CR2032 coin cell or similar battery.

ashg - 26/8/13 at 05:49 PM

Or flash the motherboard with the latest bios firmware

Slimy38 - 26/8/13 at 06:55 PM

quote:
Originally posted by coozer
and, is it worth me replacing the other HDD's with one massive drive?


Usually the answer is no. Firstly, you run the risk of losing everything all in one go if the drive failed. Secondly, larger drives can be slower (although that depends on how old the other drives are).

I would say buying a big drive would be beneficial as a backup for all the others? And depending on the interface of the removable drive you might find that one works faster when it's directly connected to the motherboard.

britishtrident - 27/8/13 at 07:37 AM

Whatever you don't flash the BIOS it is a risky operation that could brick your motherboard and is not what you require as the bios your motherboard can already detect your hard state disk.

To explain a bit what is happening your PC is loosings its' BIOS hardware settings because the CMOS battery is at its end of life. The BIOS battery supplies a tiny amount of power to keep the BIOS settings in CMOS memory while the PC is powered down.

When the CMOS battery reaches the end of its' life and not supply enough voltage the motherboard reverts to its initial default settings and has to autodetect the hard disks and other hardware from scratch and as you have already found the boot order reverts to the default settings.

Slimy38 - 27/8/13 at 08:25 AM

quote:
Originally posted by britishtrident
When the CMOS battery reaches the end of its' life and not supply enough voltage the motherboard reverts to its initial default settings and has to autodetect the hard disks and other hardware from scratch and as you have already found the boot order reverts to the default settings.


This has just reminded me of another 'quirk' I've found. The default setting for boot order tends to be in the same order as the SATA ports. If you want to try just swapping around the ports so the SSD is in port 1, that may solve the problem.

nick205 - 27/8/13 at 11:27 AM

quote:
Originally posted by britishtrident
Whatever you don't flash the BIOS it is a risky operation that could brick your motherboard and is not what you require as the bios your motherboard can already detect your hard state disk.

To explain a bit what is happening your PC is loosings its' BIOS hardware settings because the CMOS battery is at its end of life. The BIOS battery supplies a tiny amount of power to keep the BIOS settings in CMOS memory while the PC is powered down.

When the CMOS battery reaches the end of its' life and not supply enough voltage the motherboard reverts to its initial default settings and has to autodetect the hard disks and other hardware from scratch and as you have already found the boot order reverts to the default settings.



Sounds about right to me. We've just had a production PC do the same at work, wouldn't detect a special PCI card used for CNC control. Thought we were in for a new PC and/or expensive PCI card. 10 mins and a £2 battery and all is well again.

Low risk, low cost first fix for the OP's problem IMO.