Changing hard drive in PXI-8175 Embedded Controller

[Chris_12345]

I am changing the hard drive in a PXI-8175 Embedded Controller, from 30 GBytes to 120 GBytes. I formatted a 118 GByte partition with FAT32 using a laptop, then put it into the controller, used an NI floppy disk to format the drive, used another floppy disk to boot the drive, then used MAX to configure the IP address and install RT software.

Everything works fine, except that I *must* boot from the floppy, even though the program /boot.exe exists on the hard drive. I've looked at the BIOS, but I didn't find any boot sequence control.  What needs to be done to boot without the floppy?

Thanks,

Chris

[.avi file]

Greetings!

       We do not support changing the internal hard drive of the PXI controller. Additionally, you should not have a partition for RT more than 32 GB. What you are trying to do might be useful if you are setting up the remaining partition to be used in windows. 32 GB is the max you should assign for the RTOS and you have to set the partition to be FAT 32. So in a nut shell you do not want to upgrade to the 130 GB hard drive. Are you wanting to use the entire hard drive space for RT? You can choose with LabVIEW 8.2 write to file on a USB thumb drive. Please refer to the link .

Thanks much and hope this helps
Best regards

Avi Harjani


 

[.avi file]

Greetings!

    There are a few corrections to my earlier email. On FAT 32, there is very good information in the link here. The Windows 2000 and Windows XP can read and write to FAT32 filesystems of any size, but the format program on these platforms can only create FAT32 filesystems up to 32 GB.  

In the PXI 8175 there is no boot options built in to the EEPROM and hence you need to use the Floppy to boot in to RT. Only machines that have DIP switch options contain the bootloader within their on-board EEPROM.

Thanks and hope this helps

Best regards

Avi Harjani

[Chris_12345]

Thank you for your response.  Yes, I'm aware of the 32 GByte formatting limit of Windows, hence I had formatted the 120 GBytes into a FAT32 partition using third-party software, then tested the partition by loading Windows onto it.  It worked fine.  So, I then erased Windows, put the drive into the PXI-8175, and used the format diskette, which formatted the hard drive and installed boot.exe and safemode.exe.  I am only using RT, not Windows, on the PXI-8175.

So, my question remains.

As long as the boot diskette is inserted, then the PXI-8175 boots up fine.  If the boot diskette is not inserted, then the PXI-8175 does not boot up.  Using the original hard drive that came with the PXI-8175, I do not need the diskete to boot up.  What is missing on the new, larger hard drive?

I understand that NI does not support this change, but if you happen to know why, I would really appreciate it.  Is the maximum disk size that RT can handle limited to 32 MBytes?

-Chris

[.avi file]

Greetings!

    As you probably mentioned earlier in your email, it could very well be due to not testing the hard drive on RT.  You can try to reformat, but I am not sure if that will help you. What is the bios setting, and is there any information you are seeing in the console with regards to boot options. Your best work around at this point is to use the boot floppy with RT if you are upgrading the hard drive.

For RT the FAT 32 partition needs to be primary and will work with a partition greater than 32 GB as well.

Hope these answers the two questions. Please let me know.

Best regards

Avi Harjani

[Chris_12345]

Formatting a second time does not help, as expected. Yes, I have looked into the BIOS settings, but I have not found anything that would address this problem. The partition that is on my new hard drive is primary, and is the only partition.

What I am going to try next is to connect the original 30 GByte Fujitsu hard drive (that came with the PXI-8175) to an IDE port of a desktop computer, and to also connect my new 120 GByte Fujitsu drive to another IDE port of the same desktop computer. I can do this using the following adapter:

Kinamax ADP-IDE23, NewEgg part number N82E16812203012

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16812203012

Once connected, I should be able to use Norton Ghost to take the image of the original drive and put it onto the new drive. I'll post my results in a few days when I get the adapters in.

-Chris