Greetings;
I am the owner of a used Alienware Area51m 7700. The machine came without a drive caddy, power supply, or drive bay cover. I was able to get a replacement caddy and the proper power supply without too much trouble. I have yet to try to find a replacement drive bay cover.
Anyway, I have been unable to get the system to recognize any of the hard disks I attached to the controller cable (PATA). I also see no BIOS or POST level indicators that the drive controller is even present. One source I stumbled upon indicated that the controller chip may NOT be faulty, but simply might need a firmware flash; however, I can not find that source again and I have not had any luck finding a firmware flash for that model of controller. (If anyone knows about this, please point me in the correct direction!)
For some time, I simply ran the machine with SUSE via bootable USB memory stick, but recently I came across a site (http://newmodeus.com ) that was selling optical bay hard drive adapters. I took a chance and bought one and it works wonderfully! Specifically I bought the OBHD-PATA-B unit ( http://newmodeus.com/shop/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=2_27&products_id=186 ). I did have to transfer a bracket from my CD drive to the OBHD tray, but this was only 2 screws and a breeze.
I now have a hard-drive based load of XP Pro running beautifully on the system. I am sure the performance is nothing compared to what one could get from some of the configuration of the proper controller, but it has given new life this this old, but still viable machine.
To anyone facing the hard drive controller problem who is willing to give up an optical bay for a hard drive, I _highly_ recommend this option. I caught it on sale and it only cost me $25.00 USD plus shipping.
I hope this information is useful for others! Good luck.
Nox
I am the owner of a used Alienware Area51m 7700. The machine came without a drive caddy, power supply, or drive bay cover. I was able to get a replacement caddy and the proper power supply without too much trouble. I have yet to try to find a replacement drive bay cover.
Anyway, I have been unable to get the system to recognize any of the hard disks I attached to the controller cable (PATA). I also see no BIOS or POST level indicators that the drive controller is even present. One source I stumbled upon indicated that the controller chip may NOT be faulty, but simply might need a firmware flash; however, I can not find that source again and I have not had any luck finding a firmware flash for that model of controller. (If anyone knows about this, please point me in the correct direction!)
For some time, I simply ran the machine with SUSE via bootable USB memory stick, but recently I came across a site (http://newmodeus.com ) that was selling optical bay hard drive adapters. I took a chance and bought one and it works wonderfully! Specifically I bought the OBHD-PATA-B unit ( http://newmodeus.com/shop/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=2_27&products_id=186 ). I did have to transfer a bracket from my CD drive to the OBHD tray, but this was only 2 screws and a breeze.
I now have a hard-drive based load of XP Pro running beautifully on the system. I am sure the performance is nothing compared to what one could get from some of the configuration of the proper controller, but it has given new life this this old, but still viable machine.
To anyone facing the hard drive controller problem who is willing to give up an optical bay for a hard drive, I _highly_ recommend this option. I caught it on sale and it only cost me $25.00 USD plus shipping.
I hope this information is useful for others! Good luck.
Nox
