Thinkpads Forum

I replaced the motherboard on my W510 but it won't boot unless the SATA configuration in BIOS is set to RAID. If I set it to either AHCI or Compatibility. It will crash on boot up without leaving a dump and basically go into a boot loop. After I reset the SATA to raid it will boot but I can't use my Ultrsbay for a second hard drive. Is there a way out of this house of mirrors funhouse? Any insight will be appreciated.

Since nobody bothered to reply I figured it must be stupid simple. It was. I'll reset reset the situation just in case some knucklehead like me is befuddled by the same situation. I had installed a new mobo in my W510 and booted up. It booted up without incident but couldn't see the S.M.A.R.T. data or my second HDD in the Ultrabay. I booted back into the bios and saw that the RAID configuration was on for my HDDs. I changed it to AHCI and rebooted but it constantly crashed and wouldn't boot. I pulled the main HDD, booted into the bios, made sure AHCI was selected then rebooted until it quit due to the absence of a boot device. I shut it down, reinstalled the main HDD, rebooted and it's all good.

Apparently RAID is the default setting for a W510. Somewhere in the Hardware Maintenance Manual it says to select the appropriate HDD access setup before the first boot. Unfortunately, it's nowhere near the instructions on replacing the mobo. I sort of stumbled on it by accident. All's well that ends well.