Hi Andrew,

If you disable the IDE hard drive controller, the system will boot to the Scsi controller. This is normal for most computers, when both IDE and Scsi are present, IDE takes precedence and will be the boot controller.

Thanks for using the Dell Community Forums!

Hi Andrew,

You should be able to turn off the IDE controller in the System BIOS > Drive Configuration:
http://docs.us.dell.com/docs/systems/pe400sc/en/ug/j0323c30.htm#1043404

On most systems you cannot run Scsi and IDE hard drives at the same time, if you do, the system will boot to the IDE. Some systems have a setting for this in the System BIOS, but I do not believe any PowerEdge Servers have this option.

Only one PowerEdge Server is validated to boot to a USB device (the PowerEdge 1655MC), however I have seen at least one post here in the forums which indicated the PowerEdge 400 SC will boot to USB.

OK this is a start but it leaves some questions. For instance what is the recommended way to disable the IDE controller, in hardware devices? Does this mean that I cannot have a non-booting IDE drive in the system at the same time as the SCSI controller? Can I also acheive this by just removing the IDE drive but leaving the IDE controller in and enabled?

Without the BIOS boot options is there no way to possibly boot from a USB device?

Thanks for your assistance.

- Andrew