Momentus XT, Momentus, Momentus Thin, MobileMax, and other notebook drives

[InF3XioN]

Recently I replaced my HP Pavillion's DV6541ev OEM internal hard disk, with a Seagate Momentus ST9320325AS 320 GB. But after the new disk's installation, SOMETIMES my laptop fails to boot. The hdd led flashes for a moment, during the BIOS screen, but after this the screen stays black with the led not flashing. The only way to start the OS is to try to reboot over and over again, until the disk is normally detected and booted.

I have already upgraded the BIOS to the latest version available, and the its HDD self-test utility finds no problems.

Also, the disk is formatted in an one-partition EXT4 filesystem (with boot flag), and my OS is Kubuntu Lucid.

[MarcR]

I have some of these issues with 2x250XT drives. 40-50% of the time, I boot my machine after work and get a stupid hang at post while the SATA auto detection occurs. At that point I know I have to hit the Reset button and hope the drives will detect.

I wonder if there is a compatibility issue with the Asus M4A79 Deluxe board, although this has only started since I got these drives. I also have a 500GB Samsung single platter and a WDC-2TB for storage, Pioneer SLot load DVD and Blu-Ray burner and they always detect.

I have tried both AHCI and IDE setting with same results.

AARRRGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

[dstrick64]

I have exactly the same problem.  Mine is a Pavilion dv6653cl.  Original internal hard disk began failing.  I replaced it with ST9320325AS 320 GB.  Tried cloning the old drive, installing new OS, updating to lates BIOS, latest drivers for everything on the system, but it still boots only randomly, failing exactly like yours.

I am going to see if I can return it and get something different.