TR Forums

I'm working on a friend's laptop, an HP Probook 6560b. She bought a new hard drive, an HGST 1-terabyte type. The two seem to be incompatible with one another:

If I boot install media for Win7 or Win81 the installer won't see the hard drive at all. Tried switching the HD controller to IDE mode (from AHCI), nothing. Tried giving it the F6 drivers for the Intel SATA controller, nothing. Linux Mint 17.1 will see the drive and install to it, but when it reboots the system complains it can't find a boot device. The BIOS diagnostics say her hard drive fails immediately.

A different drive works just fine. I put it in, installed Win7, everything worked immediately in AHCI mode without needing F6 drivers.

The same 1TB drive works just fine in another desktop system I have*. I set up Win7 (which the laptop is licensed for) on my drive while it was in her laptop, ghosted it over to hers, and her laptop still doesn't see it properly but the same drive boots just fine on my computer. I've done chkdsk /r and a long SMART scan on her drive in my computer, which it passes with flying colors.

I've upgraded her laptop to the newest BIOS version, no change, set BIOS defaults, no change. Any suggestions? I wonder if this is a really strange RAM error.


*mine's older, C2D era. Hers is Sandy Bridge.

Maybe an Advanced Format (4K sectors) issue?

That occurred to me, but I don't know why that'd be a problem for a Sandy Bridge and not a Core 2 Duo machine.

Somehow the BIOS just doesn't like that drive.

sorry to butt in, 1st post and all.
Perhaps HPs knobbled the bios to only allow HP proprietary listed equipment.

yeti wrote:

sorry to butt in, 1st post and all.
Perhaps HPs knobbled the bios to only allow HP proprietary listed equipment.

Maybe with wireless cards (actually, come to think of it, I thought the 6460b/6560b's in particular were an exception to this), but definitely not with hard drives. I've got a 6530b and a zbook 14 G1 running on drives that HP didn't offer as options, and they work just fine. Sounds like the machine and the drive just don't like each other for some reason - not the first time I've seen that. Though you'd think that the SATA spec would make that a non-issue, provided everyone's following it...

yeti wrote:

sorry to butt in, 1st post and all.
Perhaps HPs knobbled the bios to only allow HP proprietary listed equipment.

I've heard of HP "tattooing" their hard drives, but apparently this is only a problem if you're using their restore discs, which I'm not. My drive came out of a Dell anyway, so I don't think that's it.

I think localhostrulez and the Captain are right and these two just aren't on speaking terms for some reason. Ah well, she ought to have an SSD for this use case anyway.

Long shot, but try setting the HDD to SATA2 (300Mb/s) mode via the HGST util on a PC that does recognize the drive. Check for drive jumpers too (if any).

bthylafh wrote:

yeti wrote:

sorry to butt in, 1st post and all.
Perhaps HPs knobbled the bios to only allow HP proprietary listed equipment.

I've heard of HP "tattooing" their hard drives, but apparently this is only a problem if you're using their restore discs, which I'm not. My drive came out of a Dell anyway, so I don't think that's it.

I think localhostrulez and the Captain are right and these two just aren't on speaking terms for some reason. Ah well, she ought to have an SSD for this use case anyway.

I used an HP Win8 DVD (that shipped with an Elitedesk 800) in a Lenovo, and it worked fine, save for the HP logo in system properties. My zbook shipped with the same sort of OS disc, plus a driver disc. I doubt that's the case on the consumer side (probably recovery discs there), but OP isn't using a consumer grade machine. At any rate, I only deal with biz stuff at work, and every machine that comes through the door gets promptly wiped and imaged with a clean install of ours anyway. He let me put it this way, HP isn't Apple (aftermarket hard drive temp sensors in an iMac anyone?).

localhostrulez wrote:

HP isn't Apple (aftermarket hard drive temp sensors in an iMac anyone?).

*cough*

I take it you've never worked with HP servers

morphine wrote:

localhostrulez wrote:

HP isn't Apple (aftermarket hard drive temp sensors in an iMac anyone?).

*cough*

I take it you've never worked with HP servers

My work uses those (DL380 G6's and later mainly), but nahh, I just deal with end user PCs, imaging stuff, and whatever randomness comes about (cleaning hundreds of PC and projector air vents anyone?). Save for proprietary power supplies, the PCs are easy enough to deal with (and I own one of those same models myself, the 8200). What's the deal with their servers?

localhostrulez wrote:

My work uses those (DL380 G6's and later mainly), but nahh, I just deal with end user PCs, imaging stuff, and whatever randomness comes about (cleaning hundreds of PC and projector air vents anyone?). Save for proprietary power supplies, the PCs are easy enough to deal with (and I own one of those same models myself, the 8200). What's the deal with their servers?

Proprietary RAM (that I've come across), not supplying HDD cradles so you have to buy the HDDs from them. Dealt with one server with those issues, swore off them for the foreseeable future.

Power draw? The HGST drive might pull slightly over a limit of the laptop's (5 W, I'd guess) at initialization, causing the laptop to refuse to play.

morphine wrote:

localhostrulez wrote:

My work uses those (DL380 G6's and later mainly), but nahh, I just deal with end user PCs, imaging stuff, and whatever randomness comes about (cleaning hundreds of PC and projector air vents anyone?). Save for proprietary power supplies, the PCs are easy enough to deal with (and I own one of those same models myself, the 8200). What's the deal with their servers?

Proprietary RAM (that I've come across), not supplying HDD cradles so you have to buy the HDDs from them. Dealt with one server with those issues, swore off them for the foreseeable future.

HP are by no means the only ones who don't provide hard drive caddies in spare hard drive bays. All of the Dell servers that I have at work don't either. The only time I have seen spare hard drive caddies supplied with servers is when you buy the of brand stuff who use chassis from the likes of Supermicro.

Proprietary RAM a crappy thing to do though; all of my Dells at least use standard, if high end and expensive, RAM

Anyone want to hazard a guess as to why Linux can see (but not boot from) the hard drive, but Windows can't see it at all?

Norphy wrote:

HP are by no means the only ones who don't provide hard drive caddies in spare hard drive bays. All of the Dell servers that I have at work don't either.

But can you actually easily buy the cradles from Dell? Because I tried for HP and it took me hours to find the right part number and then a while more to find a supplier, that charged an exhorbitant fee - though understandable because apparently nobody asks for them. Seems everyone just buys the HP hard drives at 2-3x the price.

When you say Windows can't see it, do you mean it's not in the My Computer drive list to be browsed or it's not in the Disk Management list? I'm wondering if the drive is getting insufficient power, in which case the OS might see that the device exists but be unable to mount it or get useful information out of it.

Can Gparted see it? If so, maybe create a new partition table?

NovusBogus wrote:

When you say Windows can't see it, do you mean it's not in the My Computer drive list to be browsed or it's not in the Disk Management list? I'm wondering if the drive is getting insufficient power, in which case the OS might see that the device exists but be unable to mount it or get useful information out of it.

Check the original post, I'm talking about the installers, not installed operating systems.

MOSFET wrote:

Can Gparted see it? If so, maybe create a new partition table?

Yes, and doesn't seem to help. This laptop supports UEFI (with a warning about it being meant for early developer access); maybe I'll try a hail mary and see if that works.

steenss wrote:

Long shot, but try setting the HDD to SATA2 (300Mb/s) mode via the HGST util on a PC that does recognize the drive. Check for drive jumpers too (if any).

Don't see any jumpers on the drive. I'll see if there's any updated firmware, though.

Topinio wrote:

Power draw? The HGST drive might pull slightly over a limit of the laptop's (5 W, I'd guess) at initialization, causing the laptop to refuse to play.

This could be. My drive's label says 0.55A at 5V and hers says 800 mA at 5V. Hers feels a bit heftier so there's probably another platter or two in there.

bthylafh wrote:

Topinio wrote:

Power draw? The HGST drive might pull slightly over a limit of the laptop's (5 W, I'd guess) at initialization, causing the laptop to refuse to play.

This could be. My drive's label says 0.55A at 5V and hers says 800 mA at 5V. Hers feels a bit heftier so there's probably another platter or two in there.

I can feel the drive spinning after I reinstalled Mint in UEFI mode, but the laptop still won't boot from it.

Yeah, but maybe it's not detecting properly at POST? And linux install CDs are more forgiving of that than Windows?

bthylafh wrote:

Topinio wrote:

Power draw? The HGST drive might pull slightly over a limit of the laptop's (5 W, I'd guess) at initialization, causing the laptop to refuse to play.

This could be. My drive's label says 0.55A at 5V and hers says 800 mA at 5V. Hers feels a bit heftier so there's probably another platter or two in there.

That from the label? If so, it'll not be the peak. The 7K500 has that same rating on the label, yet the spec sheet says it pulls 5.5W peak on the 5V rail at startup.

Topinio wrote:

bthylafh wrote:

Topinio wrote:

Power draw? The HGST drive might pull slightly over a limit of the laptop's (5 W, I'd guess) at initialization, causing the laptop to refuse to play.

This could be. My drive's label says 0.55A at 5V and hers says 800 mA at 5V. Hers feels a bit heftier so there's probably another platter or two in there.

That from the label? If so, it'll not be the peak. The 7K500 has that same rating on the label, yet the spec sheet says it pulls 5.5W peak on the 5V rail at startup.

Hmm, I thought those labels tended to show the absolute max. Ex. Laser printers that say 450W on the label, yet draw more like 250W in reality (although newer lasers, aka not mine, tend to cycle the draw up and down with the fuser while running). Could be different for internal components though.

Topinio wrote:

bthylafh wrote:

Topinio wrote:

Power draw? The HGST drive might pull slightly over a limit of the laptop's (5 W, I'd guess) at initialization, causing the laptop to refuse to play.

This could be. My drive's label says 0.55A at 5V and hers says 800 mA at 5V. Hers feels a bit heftier so there's probably another platter or two in there.

That from the label? If so, it'll not be the peak. The 7K500 has that same rating on the label, yet the spec sheet says it pulls 5.5W peak on the 5V rail at startup.

After some more digging, I suspect it's power-related. My drive, a Western Digital WD1600BJKT, has a peak power draw of 1.75W. This HGST drive's peak draw is a /lot/ higher at 5.5W. Too bad.