Pc won't boot from c: after format

Hi everyone,

I have 3 hdd's 2 sata and 1 ide and the sata is not in raid they are just seperate drives. But the problem is i done a reformat and installed vista to my 400gb sata and it all installed with no problem but when I restarted the computer it said DISK BOOT FAILURE, INSERT SYSTEM DISK. So i went to bios to make sure the 400gb sata was the main hdd like in boot order and all that but still wouldnt load. So I went back into bios changed it from the 400gb sata to the IDE drive and now it boots like normal but the ide hdd has nothing on it only like music and pics and that stuff(it is just for storage).
Any ideas why it would be doing that??

 

sorry if this is in the wrong section as well sorry

 

Are both SATA drives 400gb? Maybe you accidentally selected the wrong one in BIOS?

 

No i one is 400 the other is 500 thanx for the reply it has got confused why it is doing this i am thinking of taking the 2 storage drives out and reformatting with just the one in... I am just after a reason why it would have done this thats all..
Thanks Heaps

 

Sometimes certain BIOS' have two places that ask for drive order and boot order and that can get confusing.

I'd just hook up one of the drives to find out which one will boot up and then hook up the other one afterwards so that you won't have to reinstall again.

 

Yeh I have already tried doing that but it will only load with my 400gb sata in which has all the system files and everything on it and with the IDE drive which has nothing on it... It is weird

 

Maybe have you tried setting the IDE as slave if it isn't already?

 

Most computer motherboards recognise IDE drives as being on controller 1, and SATA drivers on controller 2 onwards. Therefore, the IDE drive would appear to the windows setup as C:\ and would automatically have the boot sector written to it. The SATA drive would appear as D:\ and this is where you installed the OS to. Therefore, the system needs both drives to function, and you need to boot from the IDE drive.

 

OK cool thanks heaps collinsl ur help is much appreciated, would it be better to do a reformat with just the 1 drive then add the other 2 later on?

 

Yes, it may be easier to do that.