After adding a HDD i have to change boot order!

[Lloyd Quenby]

Hi all,

 

I purchased a motherboard bundle of eBay for my server (P5GC-MX/1333 with Pentium Dual CPU E2180) and all works fine, however if i add a hard drive i have to modify the boot order in the bios as it tries to boot from a HDD as opposed the the USB key.

 

This is not a major issue for me but i need to setup a new build for my place of work and would like to avoid this, can anyone give me an idea why this might happen or what i need to look for in a new mobo?

 

Cheers

Lloyd

[garycase]

That's a common problem when you change the configuration.  If the BIOS boot setting isn't persistent, there's not really anything you can do.  What MAY help is to use a different USB flash drive ... some are seen as hard drive (thus must be listed as first in the "hard drive order" settings;  others are seen as USB devices ... so if USB is listed as the first boot option they'll boot directly.    The latter tend to be more persistent;  the former often cause the issue you've seen here.

 

[Lloyd Quenby]

thanks for the reply

[jbartlett]

I've seen this in ASUS boards, change the drive layout and it resets the boot order.

[garycase]

I've seen this in quite a few boards from various manufacturers.  But I've never seen a BIOS that had issues with it IF it enumerates the flash drive as a USB device instead of a hard drive.

 

Unfortunately, I don't know of any simple way to determine whether a specific flash drive will look like a hard drive or a USB device without simply trying it.    I think it's somewhat related to the size of the unit (large devices are more likely to be treated as hard drives) ... but there's no absolute correlation that I've determined.

 

[Lloyd Quenby]

i really wish i had not installed my usb stick inside the case now  :'(