VM Breaks After Adding Additional HD's

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IIIDMMIII
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VM Breaks After Adding Additional HD's

Post by IIIDMMIII »

Using Virtualbox 5.0.14 (latest release) on Mac OS X, running a Windows Server 2008 R2 VM as part of my college course.
System has been running fine up until I had to add additional hard disks onto an IDE Controller alongside the original HD on a SATA. The additional hard disks are copies of the original created in VB's Virtual Media Manager. Once I've added them, I go to boot the machine and recieve the following error message:

"FATAL: Could not read from the boot medium! System halted."

If you remove the additional disks the machine boots up offering to run startup repair as if its not been shut down properly so its something to do with the additional disks I believe. Has anyone came across this before? I need additional disks to progress with the course. :x
mpack
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Re: VM Breaks After Adding Additional HD's

Post by mpack »

Please post a VM log file of a faulting session. With the VM fully shut down after the session, right click it in GUI. Select "Show Log" and save "VBox.log" (ONLY) to a zip file. Attach the zip here.

Why do the additional disks need to be clones of each other and all attached to the same VM?
socratis
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Re: VM Breaks After Adding Additional HD's

Post by socratis »

IIIDMMIII wrote:I had to add additional hard disks onto an IDE Controller alongside the original HD on a SATA.
Problem: Once you add an IDE drive, VirtualBox will try to boot from that one instead of the SATA drive. Your IDE HD does not contain a bootable OS, that's why you get this message. I haven't found a way to give SATA HDs priority over the IDE HDs.

Solution: Add your 2nd, 3rd, etc HDs as SATA drives, in a position later in the controller list than your OS boot drive.
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Re: VM Breaks After Adding Additional HD's

Post by mpack »

Is this different from how CDs are handled? Surely the BIOS just moves on to the next drive in the boot order?
socratis
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Re: VM Breaks After Adding Additional HD's

Post by socratis »

No, it doesn't (in practice). And, don't forget that you can set the boot order, where you can clearly define that the optical disk has precedence over the hard disk. Haven't tried what happens if you have an IDE CD and a SATA CD, but I suspect that the IDE has priority. Will try it and post the results...
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mpack
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Re: VM Breaks After Adding Additional HD's

Post by mpack »

Yes, the IDE has priority, in fact that's exactly my point: IDE shouldn't prevent a SATA disk from booting, the IDE disk just has priority.
socratis
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Re: VM Breaks After Adding Additional HD's

Post by socratis »

Which is exactly the OP's problem; his IDE data disk prevents his VM from booting. Hence my suggestion to make the data disk part of the SATA family...
Do NOT send me Personal Messages (PMs) for troubleshooting, they are simply deleted.
Do NOT reply with the "QUOTE" button, please use the "POST REPLY", at the bottom of the form.
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mpack
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Re: VM Breaks After Adding Additional HD's

Post by mpack »

What is exactly the OP's problem? Being second in the queue is quite different from not being in the queue at all, which is what you seem to be suggesting. OTOH I know for a fact that I can boot the same VM from either an IDE CD or the SATA HD, hence there is no fundamental reason why the presence of an IDE drive would block a SATA drive. Have you actually tested and verified that this is a problem?
socratis
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Re: VM Breaks After Adding Additional HD's

Post by socratis »

The way I understood and replicated the OP's problem is:
- Have a VM that boots from a SATA HD.
- Add an IDE non-bootable HD.
- VM does not boot.
It's quite simple to replicate actually. Do not confuse the IDE CD with the IDE HD. The IDE HD takes precedence over the SATA HD and the SATA HD is not even under consideration from the BIOS. With no way to change it. On the other hand, and I completely agree, the IDE CD takes precedence over the SATA HD, if the boot order is set as such.
Do NOT send me Personal Messages (PMs) for troubleshooting, they are simply deleted.
Do NOT reply with the "QUOTE" button, please use the "POST REPLY", at the bottom of the form.
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mpack
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Re: VM Breaks After Adding Additional HD's

Post by mpack »

Well, that behaviour is certainly not what I would expect. I would expect the BIOS to manage drives on IDE and SATA the same (in principle) regardless of what type of drive it is. What chipset did you use?

And just to be clear: you had no bootable partition marked on the IDE drive, right? But at the same time a SATA drive was attached which would have been bootable but for the presence of the IDE drive.

If Michaln is browsing this then this question seems right up his alley.
socratis
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Re: VM Breaks After Adding Additional HD's

Post by socratis »

Well, good point, so I tried it again with my 2 VMs that I tested ( Ubuntu 12.04 and OSX 10.8 ):

Ubuntu 12.04: PIIX3, ICH9 for the motherboard and PIIX3, PIIX4, and ICH6 for the IDE controller. All 6 combinations fail. IDE is listed as first, SATA as second.

And guess what. While I was trying to replicate it on the OSX guest (which had failed before), it worked! The 2nd time!!! WHAT????

So, I tried a Win10 guest. It failed. Consistently.

Which leads me to think about EFI vs. BIOS (maybe?). I will try some other guests later and different options later tonight (if I have some time) to get to the bottom of this...
Do NOT send me Personal Messages (PMs) for troubleshooting, they are simply deleted.
Do NOT reply with the "QUOTE" button, please use the "POST REPLY", at the bottom of the form.
If you obfuscate any information requested, I will obfuscate my response. These are virtual UUIDs, not real ones.
mpack
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Posts: 39156
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Re: VM Breaks After Adding Additional HD's

Post by mpack »

Thanks: I have no guests that use EFI, so yes it would be useful if you pinned this down.
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