2nd harddrive cause no BIOS starting

duffsuzi · 05-25-2020, 11:26 AM

Dell Optiplex 9020. Plugged a 2nd harddrive in using SATA. When I boot there is nothing--- black screen, no BIOS. It's not easy to get it to boot back to BIOS either. I have to keep turning the power supply off and rebooting. Finally it will see BIOS again and will boot to one harddrive.

I made sure jumpers aren't needed and nope, that's the old style. So, I have no clue what's going on.

Maybe not a linux question as much as a general computer question. But I'm using MXlinux.

fatmac · 05-25-2020, 12:21 PM

Try swapping the drives & cables over, just in case it is that simple.

duffsuzi · 05-27-2020, 11:35 PM

Both drives work now, but I have no idea what was causing that boot problem. The only thing that makes sense to me is that the HDMI cable wiggled a bit loose and I wasn't getting signal to the monitor at times. Maybe when I went to add or remove the harddrive I was bumping it just right to make it go in and out.