Boot from caddy

[iovo]

I have an old HP Compaq 8710w workstation.  It was bought on 2008. 

Currently works with win 7 x86 , 4gb ram , T7700 2.4-GHz processor 4-MB L2
cache, 800-MHz FSB, Nvidia Quadro 512Mb nVidia NB8E-GLM (G84GLM-UU).

It has been a fine machine working even now without any problems. 

I have decided to revive it by setting dual boot with a Linux Ubuntu distribution. I removed the DVD-ROM and replaced it with a HDD caddy. Specifically 4 years ago i removed the 7200rpm Samsung replaced it with a 256MB Plextor SSD and now i used the 7200rpm Samsung with the caddy at the former DVD bay. 

However i cannot boot from the CADDY. I changed everything that needed to (and can)  be changed in BIOS ( Boot sequence CD-ROM, Floopy, USB, HDD, network etc ). The UBUNTU recognizes the HDD in the caddy as sda*, i install it there but the pc will not boot from the caddy even if i remove completely the primary drive. 

*Installing the UBUNTU it identifies the CADDY HDD as sda/ and the primary disk as sdb/ , isn't that strange? 

Any help ? 

[WAWood]

@iovo 

I'm presuming that Linux is the only OS installed on the drive in the caddy, right?

If that is the case, then you are out of luck here because HP only warranties their PCs for usage with the OS that comes preinstalled. IF you replace that with Linux, or add a Linux OS, then you assume full responsibility for maintaining that -- as HP provides Linux assistance only on Redhat and then only to commercial customers.

Any hardware that does not work will then range from simple (if there are Linux drivers available) to impossible (if there are NO Linux drivers available) to fix.

Since HP does not provide Linux drivers, your best bet for Linux support is to contact the support forum for the Linux distro you are using. Folks on Linux support forums have experience using a vareity of machines with Linux and know a lot about driver and installation issues. You will be able to get sound and detailed help there.

Good Luck

[iovo]

@WAWood thank you very much for your reply.  

The PC is 12 years old PC, working perfectly in Win 7 , which i do not use anymore. I decided to revive it , for hobbying purposes which involves to get acquainted with Linux. Since i did not find any luck booting Linux from the Caddy, i swapt the HD's and i put the Linux drive in the primary slot, which runs perfectly. So now the Win 7 drive is in the caddy but still it is not recognized as a boot device. Grub identifies that there is a drive with windows but won't boot from it. 

So the question now is how can i boot windows from Caddy ? 

I ve come to understand that is a BIOS thing that is why i am posting for a solution here. 

If i find anything i ll post a solution.