Syndacate
07-02-2009, 04:00 AM
Hey,
About 5 weeks ago, I sold my HP Pavillion dv9000z to a friend, this computer has twin 2.5" bays, it came with twin 80GB 5400 RPM SATA HD's, from the factory, one came as an OS drive, the secondary came up as a "DATA" drive.
About a month (if not a little less) before I sold it, one drive crapped out. The circumstances were rather weird, I was letting my roommate use it (and he was using it with his own hard drive, in which it was recognizing the 80GB secondary drive just fine). When he gave it back to me, the computer will not boot.
---- This is where it gets weird.
As far as I could tell, the 80GB secondary was bricked, as it didn't appear to work in either slot. Though the primary drive worked in the secondary bay on a live CD, which made me rule out the SATA connector being bad. When I pulled the secondary hard drive, the computer booted just fine, so I assumed the secondary hard drive was bad and sold it as so.
Now my friend messages me, he bought a 7200RPM 250GB Seagate drive (16MB Cache), puts it in, doesn't boot.
I tell him to put the live CD and pull the main drive, it boots into RAM just fine, and can mount, read, and write to the new hard drive, but put them both in, and it won't boot off of the disk, and it won't boot off of a live CD, and it won't boot off of USB stick.
Also, you can't tell the BIOS to boot off of the secondary bay, or else I'd suggest that he swap slots.
BIOS is the latest verison, and was updated quite a long time before I let my roommate borrow my laptop. That drive was empty at the time too and my roommate threw some stuff on it. PS: I also know that the original 80GB secondary drive is dead because I used a 2.5" SATA to USB connector and couldn't get Mac, Windows, nor Linux to recognize it.
So now as it stands, the system will boot to a live device if either hard drive is in either slot, but it will only boot when the primary drive is in there. It is as though it cannot boot with the secondary drive in there.
This all points to a BIOS issue, the BIOS is the latest firmware from HP and was working fine with 2 drives long before the initial 80GB drive crapped out. This makes me think it's a RAID issue, now from what I've read, the two drives DO have a RAID bridge between them, but from what I understand, there's no hardware RAID from that, which makes it a software RAID problem, extremely unlikely.
So you pull out the secondary drive, and GRUB shows up and everything loads all nice 'n such.
-------- Short repeat:
- can only boot primary drive (all BIOS allows for, it doesn't off of the secondary drive)
- Both drives in, won't boot off of the hard drive, USB disk, nor a live CD
- both the secondary and the primary work in EITHER slot by themselves with a live CD, read/write to them is fine
- Model is HP Pavillion DV9000Z
Primary hard drive (original drives) is a Toshiba 80GB 5400RPM drive, the one my friend just bought is a Seagate 250GB 7200RPM drive.
As far as I can tell there is no hardware RAID settings, and there is nothing in the BIOS to suggest so.
ANY help is greatly appreciated, this problem is very weird.
About 5 weeks ago, I sold my HP Pavillion dv9000z to a friend, this computer has twin 2.5" bays, it came with twin 80GB 5400 RPM SATA HD's, from the factory, one came as an OS drive, the secondary came up as a "DATA" drive.
About a month (if not a little less) before I sold it, one drive crapped out. The circumstances were rather weird, I was letting my roommate use it (and he was using it with his own hard drive, in which it was recognizing the 80GB secondary drive just fine). When he gave it back to me, the computer will not boot.
---- This is where it gets weird.
As far as I could tell, the 80GB secondary was bricked, as it didn't appear to work in either slot. Though the primary drive worked in the secondary bay on a live CD, which made me rule out the SATA connector being bad. When I pulled the secondary hard drive, the computer booted just fine, so I assumed the secondary hard drive was bad and sold it as so.
Now my friend messages me, he bought a 7200RPM 250GB Seagate drive (16MB Cache), puts it in, doesn't boot.
I tell him to put the live CD and pull the main drive, it boots into RAM just fine, and can mount, read, and write to the new hard drive, but put them both in, and it won't boot off of the disk, and it won't boot off of a live CD, and it won't boot off of USB stick.
Also, you can't tell the BIOS to boot off of the secondary bay, or else I'd suggest that he swap slots.
BIOS is the latest verison, and was updated quite a long time before I let my roommate borrow my laptop. That drive was empty at the time too and my roommate threw some stuff on it. PS: I also know that the original 80GB secondary drive is dead because I used a 2.5" SATA to USB connector and couldn't get Mac, Windows, nor Linux to recognize it.
So now as it stands, the system will boot to a live device if either hard drive is in either slot, but it will only boot when the primary drive is in there. It is as though it cannot boot with the secondary drive in there.
This all points to a BIOS issue, the BIOS is the latest firmware from HP and was working fine with 2 drives long before the initial 80GB drive crapped out. This makes me think it's a RAID issue, now from what I've read, the two drives DO have a RAID bridge between them, but from what I understand, there's no hardware RAID from that, which makes it a software RAID problem, extremely unlikely.
So you pull out the secondary drive, and GRUB shows up and everything loads all nice 'n such.
-------- Short repeat:
- can only boot primary drive (all BIOS allows for, it doesn't off of the secondary drive)
- Both drives in, won't boot off of the hard drive, USB disk, nor a live CD
- both the secondary and the primary work in EITHER slot by themselves with a live CD, read/write to them is fine
- Model is HP Pavillion DV9000Z
Primary hard drive (original drives) is a Toshiba 80GB 5400RPM drive, the one my friend just bought is a Seagate 250GB 7200RPM drive.
As far as I can tell there is no hardware RAID settings, and there is nothing in the BIOS to suggest so.
ANY help is greatly appreciated, this problem is very weird.