Boot order question

[AceWriter]

Hi folks,

I've got a newly built computer that's pretty stable and, when it's working right, really flies along. It's my first build, so I'm a pretty happy guy. However, something new and strange is happening.

I've got two SATA seagate drives configured as RAID 0 that hold C and D volumes. I've also got an eSATA drive configured as an M volume that I use for backups/archiving. The BIOS is configured to boot from the CD/DVD drive first and the RAID array holdign the C volume second. The BIOS is not supposed to look at the M drive at all as a boot device.

Until yesterday, I could boot from the RAID C volume with no problems (I'm running Vista Ultimate, BTW). Yesterday night I put my computer to "sleep" with that little sleep button in the Vista equivalent of a Start menu, shortly after which (I guess) the system went BSOD because the next thing I know it's rebooting -- and then giving me an "NTLDR Not Found" error when it tries to boot. If I look in the BIOS at that point, the BIOS wants to try to boot from the eSATA drive (which it's now seeing as part of a RAID array, which it's not). It doesn't even offer me the option to set the RAID C volume as a startup device; it doesn't even seem to see it.

At first I thought my RAID drives went bad, but no. To boot from the C volume, I have to shut OFF the eSATA drive and then things boot fine. The BIOS sees the RAID drives as C and D volumes, even recognizes that it's supposed to look at the RAID C drive after looking for a CD/DVD. But if the eSATA drive is ON when I try to boot, the system tries to boot from it and does not see the C drive.

What's up? And how to fix this? The system configured just the same way booted fine until yesterday. Since then, I have to juggle whether the eSATA is on or off when booting. That's a nuisance, but more to the point it should not be doing that....

BTW, I'm still using the 1.0 version of the mobo driver (mobo = MSI P35 Platinum); I'm planning to push that up to the 1.4 release but apparently MSI only supports flashing the BIOS after booting from a floppy ( remember those???) So, I've got to get a floppy drive before I do that. Go figure....

TIA for any input you can provide!!!

Mark