[R51] How to avoid boot delay if no main HDD is installed?

[frankiepankie]

Hi guys (and girls ?),

I have bought an SATA ultrabay casing, and an OCZ Onyx SATA SSD for my FrankenPad (R51 mainboard in T40 casing).

It is working great (VERY fast!!! read speeds up to 80mb/s That is alot faster than the old 5400rpm ATA which only did 34mb/s )


But now my problem:

I have removed the PATA main HDD, and i am only using the SSD in the Ultrabay.

In the BIOS i excluded all boot devices, except HDD1, the Ultrabay.

But when i cold boot my FrankenPad (love that name ) it is hanging/waiting for 28 seconds on the IBM splashscreen, before it boots my OS (Win7).

I if install the main HDD (it is still excluded in the BIOS boot order) it only waits about 7 seconds (normal procedure). But i don't want to have the main HDD installed, because i don't use it, and it consumes extra battery power.

Is there a way to get around the boot delay?

[frankiepankie]

Anyone?

[Harryc]

Have you tried installing the OS on the SSD without the main HD in the machine? In other words I have heard that having (2) Windows OS drives in the same machine can mess up drive lettering and order, so if you had left the main drive in while installing the OS on the SSD, and particularly if you tried to boot both drives, then you may have hosed something up.

[frankiepankie]

Hi Harry,

When i bought the SSD, i cloned the original drive to the SSD, so they are identical.

But it needs a reinstall anyway (quite slow due to all the crap that is on it) so i will try your suggestion.

[Harryc]

Great. On a different topic, I have the same Frankenpad, can you post a source for the SATA Adapter you bought?

[RealBlackStuff]

@frankiepankie:
Shouldn't yours be a Frankiepad?

[frankiepankie]

Changed the name for you RealBlackStuff

I bought the Ultrabay from: http://stores.ebay.com/nypc-tech?_rdc=1 (nypc-tech)

Quite cheap, works great, but a downside, it has a ugly bright blue LED.

I will probably solder that one out and replace it for a green one i think.

It is a great update for older machines like R5x and T4x, because with this mod you can use a SATA disk which are much faster than the PATA disk (original PATA disk 34MB/s, SATA disk 66MB/s, measured with HD Tune)

[Harryc]

Thanks for the link. So this is the exact one?
http://cgi.ebay.com/IBM-Thinkpad-T40-Ul ... 0680950362

[frankiepankie]

I don't know you if you can open the link, but this is the one i bought: http://cgi.ebay.nl/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vie ... OU:NL:1123

item description:

IBM Thinkpad T40 Ultrabay Slim SATA 2nd HDD Caddy DV04

[frankiepankie]

*Bump*

I installed Ubuntu on the SSD drive (with main HDD removed and installed with USB CDROM), works fine, but the boot delay problem is still acting up.

It is definately BIOS related, because when i power up the laptop, it waits about 30 sec on the IBM splashscreen and then boots the Ubuntu.

[CFoo]

So the SATA is seen as HDD1 in the BIOS where as previous with the DVD drive in, there was no HDD1? I would of thought it would boot quick similar to booting from a bootable DVD or CD (I mean seeing a boot media in the ultabay).

I'm assuming the BIOS now see no DVD/CD drive, correct?

[frankiepankie]

Correct

HDD0 = The internal PATA HDD
HDD1 = SATA HDD in Ultrabay

And now with only SATA HDD in Ultrabay there is indeed no CD/DVD drive visible in BIOS