Hello, I have an external ICYBOX with a 80gb ATA drive inside, and USB/SATA connection from the icybox, I want to install WIndows and linux to it as a multiboot for testing purposes as a mess about/test OS and also for security reasons.

I already have a 300GB SATA internal drive and as a note my computer specs are as follows:

AMD 4400 64Bit X2 - 2gb ram - nforce 4 a8n-sli Motherboard
WIndows XP and Ubuntu 6.06 are installing on this drive using the GRUB Loader

Now i have an expansion card with 2 SATA connectors and an unknown white connector in the middle, I connect the external drive to one of these, now when I do this I dont see it under windows/linux, when i make the connection USB i see the drive pop up and then say it is installed but I dont see it on the machine.

On device manager I had RAID Controller in unknown hardware and then i clicked update driver and selected motherboard cd, then im not sure if this made it worked but in local storage snap in in control panel it showed the drive and said not initilizaed.




As the RAID COntroller was in device manager was unknown devices and i was advised this was the SATA drive itself or a function to allow it, I clicked update driver and told it to search motherboard driver cd to which it then installed

In storage snap in in the admin settings in control panel it said HD1, red sign saying not initialized and it was 74GB which is defo the external sata drive, so i then booted the machine back up

press ctrl + s to go into RADI config like it always does but below that it said 1: maxtor 6l080l0 74gb at this point i press enter as it always hangs there unless i dont,wqhen i click enter it says no valid device press any key to continue or enter raid config ctrl + s

If i press any key it goes onto the list where it shows all comp devices and then after that goes into windows loading screen however it just hangs at this screen

When i remove the sata drive and reboot I no longer have this problem.

If i go into RAID config i have the options create raid set delete raid set rebuild raid1 set resolve conflicts low level format logical drive info

Below this it shows the physical drive maxtor again 74GB

I dont know what to do as im not trying to set up RAID i will not be using the drives at the same time, In the motherboard cd it has a make silicon bootable floppy for sata drive or something and make nvidia bootable floppy for sata drive,

I assumed it would simply pick the SATA drive up in a partition view and i could install an OS to it from a bootbale CD but I cant boot from a CD when the SATA drive is connected.

After low level format on the raid controller options i put in the ubuntu cd went to install it, Got to the partition part and it found the hard drive, I formatted the drive installed UBuntu to it but at the part where it asked about grub boot loader it said it has found ubuntu and windows which was on the primary main HD, i clicked yes which now i believe i shouldnt of.

When loading it said booting from local drive and just hanged there and after turning the drive off it then says grub load error, When i go into BIOS the drive still is not picked up as 2nd SATA master.

I then reinstalled linux the same way and at the GRUB stage selected HD1 instead to install to not the master boot record, now i can boot into windows and ubuntu on my internal drive but when i actually connect the external it just says booting from local disk and hangs on that

What am i doing wrong?