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2TB Toshiba USB drive prevents booting on Intel Motherboard D865GLC

I have an Intel motherboard model D865GLC with a Pentium 4 3.0Ghz, 2GB of memory and USB 2.0. This setup has been running file for quite some time. I added a new TOSHIBA 2TB USB 3.0 external drive, model MQ01ABB200. Even though the drive is USB 3.0, I was assured by the seller that it was backwards compatible with USB 2.0.

This works fine: I can read/write drive, but when the computer reboots it hangs at the Intel Logo screen ... forever. If I physically remove the drive it boots OK. I've set the bios to not include USB devices in the boot order and also to disable USB boot. This does not help. I've moved the drive to different USB ports (but not to every port) and still no go.

This is really a fatal error. This drive goes on an unattended remote server that is set to boot on power-up. With this drive, it will never reboot after going down. If I cannot remedy this, the drive will have to go back.

Does anyone have any experience with this kind of problem?
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Shane McKeown
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This is common with old motherboards and new hardware. This version of BIOS is very old (Intel stopped updating the motherboard in 2005). If it is some kind of bug with the 2TB Toshiba there is nothing much you can try besides getting the latest version of BIOS on it to see if that fixes the problem.

https://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?agr=Y&DwnldID=10130&lang=eng&OSVersion=%0A%09%09%09%09%09%09%09%09%0A%09%09%09%09%09%09%09&DownloadType=BIOS
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Mark

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smckeown777: the drive is host powered, not self powered. I'm not sure if trying this on another computer will help, though I supposed it wouldn't hurt to try. It needs to work on *this* computer. I do have a self powered drive I could try, and I'll try with a non USB 3.0 drive.

dec0mpile: I'll try the firmware update this weekend if I can figure out how to do that.
Trying on another computer is purely to confirm that the drive itself isn't an issue - i.e if it works on another computer and doesn't show the same issues then your issue is your motherboard...

As stated by @dec0mpile the issue is more than likely the older board(I've had this issue on my own P4 machine a few years ago and no fix for it)...so its just a way of eliminating the drive from the issue
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smckeown777: > Can you test the drive on another different system ... ?

I've taken both of your suggestions. I tried a 2TB powered drive: a somewhat older (purchased in 2010) WDC WD20EARS-00MVW. The computer booted with that drive just fine! Main problem solved.

I also tried the self-powered Toshiba on a new ASUS P8Z77-V LK motherboard with an 11/16/2012 AMI BIOS (board actually purchased new in May, 2013). This computer previously hosted the self-powered WD drive described above. The computer booted just fine with the self-powered Toshiba.

Since these two drives are supposed to be remote, synchronized mirrors of each other, swapping the older, self-powered WD to the older machine and the newer, host-powered Toshiba to the new machine solved the entire problem.

dec0mpile: thanks for the firmware update idea, though given that I can solve the problem without that scarey operation I'll not try that on these production machines. Maybe one day when I mothball the older computer I give it a shot to see if I can.

Thanks!