SeaTools

[markgca]

i have a brand new system i just completed building (using some seagate drives pulled from another computer) and windows 7 shows some health issues with one of the drives;  i downloaded seatools  for dos to do some checking and it wouldnt boot properly.

using the latest version of seatools for dos SeaToolsDOS213bEURO.ISO,  burned it to a cd as instructed and booted; the following occurred (in brief):

------------------------------------- 

FreeDos kernel build 2036.....

Kernel compatibility 7.10 .....

the copyright notice

FreeDos HIMEM64 3.10...

HIMEM _ Always on .....

TURBODSK 2.1 - Drive C: unformatted

Bad or missing Command Interpreter:  command.com /? /E:256

Enter the full shell command line:  ."

-------------------------------------

so i tried the same cd in another older system, and it works fine; boots, reads the drives, etc.  So it probably isnt the CD

the system that doesnt boot;

evga x58 sli motherboard

12gb of corsair TR3X6G1600C8

intel i7

ST3750640AS Barracuda 7200.10

Intel X25-M ssd

Plextor PX-880SA DVD/CD

any suggestions?  it booted fine for windows 7 install, and memtest86/+ etc.  and it seems to boot fine here, just looking like some incompatibility somewhere.

http://i260.photobucket.com/albums/ii38/markg_2008/IMG_0187.jpg

Edit:  i booted FreeDOS by itself (downloaded the latest version from their site) and it loaded, then gave me a different error message, basically my dvd drive isnt supported?

http://i260.photobucket.com/albums/ii38/markg_2008/IMG_0188.jpg

Message Edited by markgca on 11-09-2009 08:13 AM

[fzabkar]

Does this old post help?

http://forums.seagate.com/stx/board/message?board.id=ata_drives&view=by_date_ascending&message.id=7215#M7215

The OP suggests that you go into your BIOS setup and select Legacy IDE mode (or compatibility mode) for your Plextor SATA DVD/CD.

Message Edited by fzabkar on 11-11-2009 02:15 PM

[markgca · Accepted solution]

thanks for the suggestion, i had tried that with no luck.

turns out i figured out how to fix it; 

the dvd/cd boots fine, reads the disk, but THEN apparently loads some device driver to continue with the freedos program (which is what seagate apparently uses), and it is that driver (or lack thereof) that was giving me the problem.  i simply attached the dvd to another port (also ahci by the way) that uses a different chip and it works fine! 

i had to do a lot of detective work on this; trying to boot freedos was what allowed me to run it down.  they probably just dont support the jmicron sata chip it was connected to for some reason, even though they have been out for some time....but do support the other sata chips on the board.

anyway its fixed!

mark