IEEE 1394 Hard Disk Support in Windows 2000 (244919)

SUMMARY

Windows 2000 supports IEEE 1394 High Performance Serial Bus-compliant devices (including hard disks) connected to supported IEEE 1394 controllers. You can use IEEE 1394 hard disks for the Windows 2000 system and boot partitions, as well as normal storage. To use these drives for the system or boot partition, the computer's BIOS must have IEEE 1394 boot support.

MORE INFORMATION

If your computer's BIOS does not have IEEE 1394 support enabled, you cannot install Windows 2000 on the drive during the Text-mode portion of Windows 2000 Setup. The drive and partitions appear in Setup, but are listed on an "unknown controller." Attempting to choose the drive or partition for installation results in the following error message:

Your computer's startup program cannot gain access to the disk containing the partition or free space you chose. Setup cannot install Windows 2000 on this hard disk.

This error message indicates that Setup has determined that the computer's BIOS cannot be used to access the disk that is required to start the operating system. This is not a limitation of Windows 2000.

NOTE: Windows 2000 Setup always uses the "multi()" syntax in the Boot.ini file when it is installed on a disk attached to an IEEE 1394 controller. If the drive or partition you selected during Setup exceeds 7.8 gigabytes (GB) in size, the IEEE 1394 controller must support and have (BIOS) INT-13 Extensions enabled. For additional information, click the article number below to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base:

240672 Setup Does Not Check for INT-13 Extensions

You cannot use the "scsi()" syntax in the Boot.ini file for booting to a drive attached to an IEEE 1394 controller because there are no SCSI-ID jumpers associated with this type of hard disk.

Although IEEE 1394 drives are not listed as being removable devices in Disk Management, you cannot upgrade IEEE 1394 hard disks from basic to dynamic disks because the option is unavailable. The option is unavailable because you can easily unplug and reconnect these drives, which could cause problems with other dynamic drives in the system.