Barracuda XT, Barracuda, Barracuda Green, DiamondMax and other desktop SATA and IDE drives

[appleman976]

Long story short: I had to replace the hard drive in my laptop and now when I try to reinstall Windows it doesn't seem to detect the hard drive.  I've included a fairly detailed description of my problems below including major specs.  Any help anyone could provide would be greatly appreciated.

I have recently been having issues with my HP Pavillion dv6500 Notebook where it would freeze approximately every 30 minutes.  It was found that the hard rive was corrupt and needed to be replaces. I replaced the OEM 120GB/5400RPM Hard Drive with a fully compatible 320GB/7200RPM Hard Drive (both manufactured by Seagate and both 2.5" SATA).  As my laptop would freeze I was unable to create a recovery disc (no original discs came with the notebook) and as such, ordered Windows Vista recovery discs directly from HP.  

I successfully installed the new hard drive and ran diagnostics; first via HP diagnostics by doing a hard drive self test (pressing f10 at startup) and then by doing a check with Seagate's Seatools software.  Both confirmed that the drive is installed and functioning properly.  I installed the recovery discs.  Disc one fully installs and instructs disc two to be inserted.  Disc two is inserted and installs.  Once I click finish a new screen appears telling me that software is being installed.  Upon completion of that software installs I receive a message stating "Please wait while Windows prepares to open for the first time."  Then the screen goes black and nothing happens.  I have tried to this reinstall approximately 10 times thus far.  Sometimes I receive a blank black screen, sometimes I receive a screen stating "Operating System Not Found" or "No Hard Disk Detected."  The only option I have is to turn off the laptop via the power button.  When I turn it back on I receive a "Windows did not shut down properly, would you like to open in safe mode/normally etc..." screen.  When I choose to start Windows I receive an error that says along the lines of "Window was not installed, please insert disc to reinstall" and when I do, the process repeats.I have also tried to install Windows XP (though I am aware is are SATA driver issues and I am unaware how to deal with this) and I receive the same message; I am told that Windows could not detect a hard drive. 

Something that may be of interest though, when I attempt to install XP I am almost immediately told there is no hard drive, while when I attempt to install Vista it seems to go through the entire install process (lasting up to maybe an hour) before it fails.

So far no one has been able to figure out what the problem is.  As I see it, the hard drive is installed, but when installing windows it will not detect the hard drive.

Any help you could provide would be greatly appreciated.  Thank you in advance.

Specs:

HP Pavillion dv6500 Entertainment Notebook
s/n: CNF7387WTH 

Operating System: Windows Vista 32bit (I also can install XP)

Old Hard Drive:  Seagate 2.5" SATA 120GB 5400RPM
New Hard Drive: Seagate 2.5" SATA 320GB 7200RPM (http://www.seagate.com/ww/v/index.jsp?vgnextoid=006442b3f64f9110VgnVCM100000f5ee0a0aRCRD)

[everrest]

See if the drive is detected in the  bios settings. You also might try booting to a Ubuntu Live CD and see if the drive shows up. Try another HD.  I would contact HP and see if you need to install a driver when installing the OS.  Since you had trouble with the old HD it  could be a Controller Issue.  I had a previous laptop that would run Ubuntu and drive checks fine, but any install of a Microsoft O/S would crash after a few minutes.

[HughR]

Sorry, I don't have any answer.  Not surprising since I'm not a MS Windows user.  But I'll throw you suggestions that might help you solve the problem or at least narrow it down.

As I understand it, common garden variety XP does not know about SATA.  But if you got reinstallation/recovery XP disks from HP for your notebook, they surely would include SATA drivers.  You did not say that you got the XP disks from HP, so your XP installation experience is as expected.

Your new disk drive must be (mostly) working since it is used a lot during installation.  I'd suggest that the problem lies with Vista or HP and that you might ask in fora focussed on those topics.  Not that asking here is wrong or useless.

Have a look for BIOS settings that might be affecting this.  I'm not saying that there are any, but it is worth a look.  Perhaps resetting the BIOS settings to factory defaults would be wise.

Getting the precise wording of each message is useful: then you can google for it.

How do you know that the old drive needed to be replaced?  Some drives get "corrupted" by having their contents scrambled (say, by malware) and yet are still healthy in a hardware sense.

Freezing frequently is horrible but it is also non-specific: a lot of different problems can cause that.  What  makes you sure that the problem was the disk hardware?

Consider trying a live Linux CD (Ubuntu 9.04 is quite reasonable).  It gives you a way of testing the system without requiring the hard drive to function 100%.  If you've nothing to lose on the hard drive, installation of Ubuntu on the drive is pretty easy and would serve as a test.

Consider trying SeaTools for DOS (downloadable for free from Seagate).  You run that as a bootable CD.  You might test both your old and new drives.

Consider memtest86 (I think that you can boot into that from a ubuntu live CD).  It is always good to be sure that flaky memory isn't a problem.  A good way to run it is start it up when you are finished for the day and then see the results when you come back the next day.

Good luck!  Please post any results here since that might help others.

[mooner]

Check to see if HP has an updated BIOS for your laptop...

I also wonder if there was nothing wrong with your previous HD -- maybe it was the SATA controller/southbridge chip on the motherboard.

If you have a SATA optical drive, you could try plugging the HD into that cable and see if it is any better/different...