Question : Problem: Booting from External SATA

Hello

I have an Icybox external case, inside is a ATA 80GB Hard drive, this is connected to my computer using SATA cable to a SATA external port which comes form my motherboard, which has 2 built in external sata ports (nforce 4 A8N-SLI)

I would like to boot from this external drive as I was led to believe that having an external drive SATA as long as its from a SATA external connector will appear to windows as if it was internal which makes perfect sense to me.

When i turn the power on however and boot the machine it just loads my boot loader and i cannot see it.

When i log into windows and click on my computer, and device manager it says unknown devices are RAID & USB device but it says this when the SATA drive isnt plugged in, also says under ATA, i have nforce 4  Serial ATA controller x 2 and then nforce 4 parallel ata controller,

When i boot from a windows disk or run a linux partiton prgram it does not pick up the drive, I am wondering what I am doing wrong and how i should boot/find the SATA device

Thanks alot

Answer : Problem: Booting from External SATA

No, it doesn't matter if they are external or not. External would be the one you connect the external disk to, but you should be able to decide where you connect the external header to. According to the manual of the board you can boot from sata 1 and 2, but not the others. So just connect your external disk to Sata 1 or 2. You'll probably just need to switch a cable on the board.