External CDRW/DVD drive for Latitude D600

Question

Hi All,   I just bought a 2nd drive module for my Dell D600. This gives me the ability to boot off the primary drive or the modular bay(work purposes). Unfortunately, if i'm booting off the modular bay I won't have access to the CDRW/DVD drive. I was told by Dell that external optical drives won't work well because the board can't handle the power. I've also toyed with the idea of using an IDE to USB cable to run my Dell ROM. Does anyone have any suggestion? Thanks!!

WParsons · Answer

I had the same problem with my C840. To get around this I modified my boot.ini on my primary drive with this line....

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Dell C840 Modular HDD" /fastdetect

Note: \WINDOWS may need to be changed to \WINNT depending up what your system directory is named.

Hope this helps. This will give you access to your CDRW/DVD drive.

- Wade

acoder · Answer

I have a question, how did you get to format your modular HDDD to be bootable in the first place? I am having issues with that stage itself.   Please let me know.Thanks! AC

WiG · Answer

You don't.  The bootable partition (NT/2000/XP) in the primary HD has a boot loader that can load Windows on the modular HD.

Bluecalyx · Answer

Hey guys. I can boot off of the modular bay fine. The problem is, on the Dell D600 with the Primary HD and Modular Bay intact, there is no place to use an optical drive (because the Dbay is being used). Dell support said an external optical may not be used because of power limitations. Has anyone been succesfull using an external optical drive on D600?

acoder · Answer

BlueCalyx, Nope have not tried that (Optical Drive )yet. But what I needed to know was, how did you make the modular bay HDD bootable. I have both the primary and the modular HDD attached to my D600 and the modular bay HDD can easily be formatted and accessible thru' windows explorer. However I need to make it independently bootable. Seems like you have gotten it that way. How did you do it? I did the following... 1. Booted from primary HD. 2. Ran disk management (win 2k Prof) 3. Formatted the new modular bay hdd. (to FAT32) 4. Made the partition 'Active'. 5. Set the boot sequence to Modular bay HDD at the top (in Bios settings). 6. Shutdown-re-started the machine. But got the error 'could not find ntldr' and the machine won't boot of the modular HDD. Am currently trying to get it to make the modular bootable, but am getting issues. Could you please let me know what I am missing Thanks, Acoder

WParsons · Answer

I believe your modular bay hd would work if you removed the internal drive. hope this helps.

WParsons · Answer

I believe your problem is that both of your hard drivers are now active. That is why you are getting the error. You have to pick. That is why I modified my boot.ini file the way I did.

Bluecalyx · Answer

You may have two active partitions. Essentially, what i did was fairly simple. Both hard drives have windows 2k and XP. I installed both Win 2k on both drive from the primary bay. I then installed Win XP on top of that. Still, doing this from the primary bay. I then took one of the HD and installed it unto the modular bay. When I restart, I select F12(boot menu) and select Modular Bay. I then have my OS choices from there. Hope that helps.

acoder · Answer

BluCalyx, All--Thanks for all your ideas :-)

But my problem remains. I wanted to see if I could avoid having to switch the Hard drives between bays!(Primary and Modular). Also, I read up some article on the same (http://www.bay-wolf.com/hdmedbay-d.htm)and there is a chance of the HD pins getting bent if one is not careful or is not used to doing this sort of thing.

Way it goes currently, I am going to wait on it or have an expert do it. Don't really trust my skills on this one!

I did try another option though, booted thru' bootable floppies (4 floppies) but when the install got to accessing the Hard drive(s) it said could not find HD device--load error screen (the winnt blue screen type of screen came thru')..dunno why.

:-) I wish the Dell D600 would boot of an external USB CD drive. That would make things so simple. But I hear that this is the standard problem with Dell machines...not just the D600.

Dell does that ring-a-bell...anybody home...anyone listening!

But thanks Guys...any other suggestions...most welcome.

Thanks,
Acoder

WParsons · Answer

Just thought of something. The D600 will boot from a USB HD. If you go to your local electonics store, they will sale you a USB 2.0 external 2.5' hard drive enclosure.  This should work.

acoder · Answer

Thanks WParsons,

But here's what I have discovered since last time, My bios version is A08 , I have found that on an udpdated Bios (from another colleague's dell d600 latitude) A13 bios version, the CDROM -USB writer WILL indeed boot, however, not successfully as the disk controller drivers are not found on the windows 2k profeswsional standard CD rom install program. The documentation says that if the disk controllers are not staqndard ATA/ATAPI then the install program will not be able to load them and untilately the Boot will fai as the ANY harddrives will not beaccessible to install the OS to. This is what is happening.

Currently , I am trying to fnd out WHIC HD controller types ythe DELL d600 latitide has...(definately do not seem the standard types) though an examination of the same yielded ATA type drivers. dunno why standard win 2k won't load and is giving device inaccesible errors.(blue screen) after going 90% boot from the CDrom(USB).

I copied all driver files being used by Both the Harddrives (Primary and modular) onto the boot cdroms/floppies(switched to floppies). But then I got the erro txtoemsetup.txt file not found! error. (I had to presee f6 during win 2k installation to load 3rd party drivers for cthe controllers!)

Anywya,s all this yet not breakthrough, don;t know what I am missing. Will lkeep trying as time permits..

Anyone from DELL help?.....

Thanks Wparsons, will let you know if I get a breakthru'
Acodeer

Storage, Drives & Media

External CDRW/DVD drive for Latitude D600

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