T30 wont boot off of 100GB seagate HD

[deneb]

I just got a T30 to replace my dell. I had a 100GB seagate ST910022A in the dell that was working fine. The 40GB toshiba that came with the T30 works fine, but when I put the 100GB in it will not boot. After the IBM bios screen it just sits there and blinks a cursor. I have booted the computer with a bootable CD and am able to read and write to the 100GB with no problems. I have repartitioned off of my bootable CD and re-written the MBR to no avail. I updated the bios and firmware to the latest versions, no help. This is kind of wierd, but the computer refuses to go into setup when I put in the XP pro or home CDs. It gives the text at the top that it is scanning hardware, then just gives me the blinking cursor again. This is strange because windows 2000 goes into setup no problem. It does seem really slow though. I have run through win2K setup and when it goes to reboot all I get is the blinking cursor again. I have also tried fedora 4, it installs OK, I have it install the GRUB bootloader in the MBR but no good, when I reboot just blinking cursor. The only thing i did notice was that the linux boot CD displays some messages about DMA errors and timeouts when initializing the drive. I have been doing computers for years but this one has me scratching my head. Anybody come across something similar? Know how to get it working?

Thanks

[tfflivemb2]

Have you updated the BIOS to be able to accept the larger hard drive?

[LtTPfan]

Have you updated the BIOS to be able to accept the larger hard drive?

I believe he mentioned that in the 7th? sentence. You may be experiencing eye strain from reading and responding to so many posts--I know I am.

[tfflivemb2]

Have you updated the BIOS to be able to accept the larger hard drive?

I believe he mentioned that in the 7th? sentence. You may be experiencing eye strain from reading and responding to so many posts--I know I am.

whoops, I think you're right

[dsvochak]

...messages about DMA errors and timeouts when initializing the drive

You may want to run the Seagate diagnostic program (SeaTools) available here:
http://www.seagate.com/support/seatools/

Just to make sure there's nothing wrong with the drive.

[deneb]

I tried the ISO CD of seatools and it wouldnt boot off the CD on the T30. I will put it back in the dell and give it a shot. It seems to be working fine in the dell.

[deneb]

I ran all the diagnostics in the seatools software and it came back and said there is no problem with the drive. I wiped everything, reformatted - nothing still on the T30. Put it back in the Dell, no problem booted right up when I installed XP. This is really a wierd one for me, it screams incompatible but there is no reason it should be. Even if the bios doesnt support the newest ATA standard, the drive should be backwards compatible enough to support it. The wierdest thing is that I can readn and write the drive when I use a boot CD. Any ideas?

[Kyocera]

If you can get a set of recovery CD's why not go that route it may work. This is what I like to call here in the south a real brain buster.

Are the XP cd's factory or copied, maybe they are having a problem with your CD drive.

[christopher_wolf]

Mmm, I wouldn't always rely on the HDDs being backward compatible past 1.5 Years; that means more driver and support cost for the HDD maker and they don't have really *huge* margins in the laptop business. I got a 60GB Hitachi drive, new and fresh out of the box, put it into my old ze5170 HP laptop to replace another HDD; and it didn't work. It would install Windows, Linux, and BSD just fine from a CD; yet it wouldn't boot. Becuase the BIOS was pretty old (way more than 2 years). HTH