The Notebook Review forums were hosted by TechTarget, who shut down them down on January 31, 2022. This static read-only archive was pulled by NBR forum users between January 20 and January 31, 2022, in an effort to make sure that the valuable technical information that had been posted on the forums is preserved. For current discussions, many NBR forum users moved over to NotebookTalk.net after the shutdown.
Problems? See this thread at archive.org.

    CF-29: SSD found by new Windows XP install but not BIOS??!

    Discussion in 'Panasonic' started by glasair, Nov 18, 2012.

  1. glasair

    glasair Notebook Enthusiast

    Reputations:
    0
    Messages:
    11
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    5
    I'm having a problem that is the opposite of others I have read about. My CF-29E had a HDD failure, so I shoehorned a Crucial 64GB SSD in the caddy with a generic SATA to PATA ZIF adapter found all over ebay. BIOS wont show any IDE master, only an IDE secondary CD/DVD. However, when I boot up from my XP installer CD, I the SSD shows up (as 61GB), located at disk 0, ID1, bus 0, ATAPI.

    I can format it (appears to work), copy the XP installer files to the newly formatted partition (also appears to work, no errors come up, the HDD light is flickering with the installer files being copied.

    However, after rebooting to continue install, its like there is no drive in the machine! Still does not show in BIOS, and it directly goes to trying to boot from LAN. This is strange to me because if it is not seen in BIOS, how come the XP installer sees it and can format it?

    Any ideas what I can do to get this thing to work correctly? Thanks!
     
    glasair, Nov 18, 2012
    #1
  2. jonlowe

    jonlowe Notebook Consultant

    Reputations:
    70
    Messages:
    103
    Likes Received:
    19
    Trophy Points:
    41
    I don't have a CF-29, but some similar experience I've had with a CF19 might help.

    Did you go to the Boot menu in the bios? Sometimes new drives are stuck down in the disabled boot list, and you have to first move them to the enabled list, then move them up in priority so it will try to boot from them first. And I always disable boot from lan in the boot list. For some reason Panasonic stock bios settings seems to put boot from lan in the enabled list as a fairly high priority.

    What about the jumper on the SATA to IDE adapter? Is it on or off? If it is in place, try taking it off, or vice versa. That determines master/slave/cable detect, but I don't know which is which.
    Good luck.

    Jon
     
    jonlowe, Nov 18, 2012
    #2