New laptop hard drive cranky.

D

David Farber

Guest
I am servicing an HP dv2125nr notebook computer. The problem was that it
came up with a blue screen while booting and said,
"unmountable_boot_volume."

I took the drive out and mounted it in my desktop pc via the on board SATA
controller. I booted to my system and ran a chkdsk and an anti-virus scan on
the notebook drive. It found some problems and fixed them. I put the drive
back in the notebook and it started working again. So far so good.

I put the drive back in the desktop pc and made an image backup to my
internal IDE drive. Still, so far so good.

I bought a new Fujitsu hard drive off of ebay, received it, and mounted it
in my desktop pc thinking I could restore the image file from hard disk to
the new Fujitsu drive. However when I powered up the pc, the pc speaker
beeped once as it always does after posting, then it froze at the screen
where it displays the components attached to the IDE and SATA controllers.
After a few seconds, the screen went blank and the system rebooted again. It
stayed in this loop until I had to manually remove the power. I was unable
to get into the bios settings. If I remove the new drive, of course
everything is fine again.

I called Fujitsu and told them the story and they said it could be a
firmware problem where it was only designed to operate in certain systems.
That was news to me. I never heard of a new, empty hard drive being designed
to only operate in specific systems.

Have any of you encountered a problem like this before? I doubt the hard
drive is defective but on the other hand, I can't think of any other
reasonable explanation.

By the way, if I put the new drive in the notebook and try to boot with a
utility cd, the same thing happens. It freezes on the HP logo though it
doesn't constantly reboot.

Thanks for your reply.
--
David Farber
David Farber's Service Center
L.A., CA
 
David Farber wrote:
I am servicing an HP dv2125nr notebook computer. The problem was that it
came up with a blue screen while booting and said,
"unmountable_boot_volume."

I took the drive out and mounted it in my desktop pc via the on board SATA
controller. I booted to my system and ran a chkdsk and an anti-virus scan on
the notebook drive. It found some problems and fixed them. I put the drive
back in the notebook and it started working again. So far so good.

I put the drive back in the desktop pc and made an image backup to my
internal IDE drive. Still, so far so good.

I bought a new Fujitsu hard drive off of ebay, received it, and mounted it
in my desktop pc thinking I could restore the image file from hard disk to
the new Fujitsu drive. However when I powered up the pc, the pc speaker
beeped once as it always does after posting, then it froze at the screen
where it displays the components attached to the IDE and SATA controllers.
After a few seconds, the screen went blank and the system rebooted again. It
stayed in this loop until I had to manually remove the power. I was unable
to get into the bios settings. If I remove the new drive, of course
everything is fine again.

I called Fujitsu and told them the story and they said it could be a
firmware problem where it was only designed to operate in certain systems.
That was news to me. I never heard of a new, empty hard drive being designed
to only operate in specific systems.

Have any of you encountered a problem like this before? I doubt the hard
drive is defective but on the other hand, I can't think of any other
reasonable explanation.

By the way, if I put the new drive in the notebook and try to boot with a
utility cd, the same thing happens. It freezes on the HP logo though it
doesn't constantly reboot.

Thanks for your reply.
Click to expand...
What happens if the blank SATA drive is the only drive in your desktop
system? Can you at least get to the BIOS then?

Sylvia.
 
I called Fujitsu and told them the story and they said it could be a
firmware problem where it was only designed to operate in certain systems.
That was news to me. I never heard of a new, empty hard drive being designed
to only operate in specific systems.

Have any of you encountered a problem like this before? I doubt the hard
drive is defective but on the other hand, I can't think of any other
reasonable explanation.
Click to expand...
I've seen occasional weirdness, somewhat like this, when attempting to
install a new SATA-2 hard drive in a system with a SATA-1 host
interface. There appear to be some cases in which the drive and the
host controller fail to correctly negotiate their way down to the
SATA-1 signalling rate, and the PHYs tend to hang up.

In cases lile this, it may be possible to put the hard drive into a
newer PC with a SATA-2 interface, and then use a vendor-specific
utility to configure the drive for SATA-1 operation.

--
Dave Platt <dplatt@radagast.org> AE6EO
Friends of Jade Warrior home page: http://www.radagast.org/jade-warrior
I do _not_ wish to receive unsolicited commercial email, and I will
boycott any company which has the gall to send me such ads!
 
Sylvia Else wrote:
David Farber wrote:
I am servicing an HP dv2125nr notebook computer. The problem was
that it came up with a blue screen while booting and said,
"unmountable_boot_volume."

I took the drive out and mounted it in my desktop pc via the on
board SATA controller. I booted to my system and ran a chkdsk and an
anti-virus scan on the notebook drive. It found some problems and
fixed them. I put the drive back in the notebook and it started
working again. So far so good. I put the drive back in the desktop pc and
made an image backup to my
internal IDE drive. Still, so far so good.

I bought a new Fujitsu hard drive off of ebay, received it, and
mounted it in my desktop pc thinking I could restore the image file
from hard disk to the new Fujitsu drive. However when I powered up
the pc, the pc speaker beeped once as it always does after posting,
then it froze at the screen where it displays the components
attached to the IDE and SATA controllers. After a few seconds, the
screen went blank and the system rebooted again. It stayed in this
loop until I had to manually remove the power. I was unable to get
into the bios settings. If I remove the new drive, of course
everything is fine again. I called Fujitsu and told them the story and
they said it could be a
firmware problem where it was only designed to operate in certain
systems. That was news to me. I never heard of a new, empty hard
drive being designed to only operate in specific systems.

Have any of you encountered a problem like this before? I doubt the
hard drive is defective but on the other hand, I can't think of any
other reasonable explanation.

By the way, if I put the new drive in the notebook and try to boot
with a utility cd, the same thing happens. It freezes on the HP logo
though it doesn't constantly reboot.

Thanks for your reply.

What happens if the blank SATA drive is the only drive in your desktop
system? Can you at least get to the BIOS then?

Sylvia.
Click to expand...
Hi Sylvia,

Same thing happens when the SATA drive is the only drive in the desktop pc.
Keeps rebooting and cannot enter into the BIOS.

Thanks for your reply.
--
David Farber
David Farber's Service Center
L.A., CA
 
Dave Platt wrote:
I called Fujitsu and told them the story and they said it could be a
firmware problem where it was only designed to operate in certain
systems. That was news to me. I never heard of a new, empty hard
drive being designed to only operate in specific systems.

Have any of you encountered a problem like this before? I doubt the
hard drive is defective but on the other hand, I can't think of any
other reasonable explanation.

I've seen occasional weirdness, somewhat like this, when attempting to
install a new SATA-2 hard drive in a system with a SATA-1 host
interface. There appear to be some cases in which the drive and the
host controller fail to correctly negotiate their way down to the
SATA-1 signalling rate, and the PHYs tend to hang up.

In cases lile this, it may be possible to put the hard drive into a
newer PC with a SATA-2 interface, and then use a vendor-specific
utility to configure the drive for SATA-1 operation.
Click to expand...
I found the specification sheet for the new hard drive
here:http://www.fujitsu.com/downloads/COMP/fcpa/hdd/mhw2160bh_datasheet.pdf

It says the transfer rate 150MB/sec which is the SATA-1 protocol, no?

The HP notebook specification sheet is here:
http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?docname=c00771060&tmp_task=prodinfoCategory&lc=en&dlc=en&cc=us&lang=en&product=3245594Thanks for your reply.--David FarberDavid Farber's Service CenterL.A., CA
 
On Tue, 26 Jan 2010 15:39:27 -0800, David Farber wrote:

I am servicing an HP dv2125nr notebook computer. The problem was that it
came up with a blue screen while booting and said,
"unmountable_boot_volume."
Click to expand...

Original trimmed:


I have a G60-127NR which is simular to yours and during a service issue
session I learned that they don't support all SATA formats for these
machines.

Here is the list they gave me for mine.

The notebooks support the following 9.5mm (2.5-inch) Serial ATA hard
drives:

120GB (5400 rpm)

160GB (5400 rpm)

200GB (5400 rpm)

250GB (5400 rpm)

320GB (5400 rpm)

You will notice that the list f sizes is specific and no 7200rpm drive is
supported from this list. So if you bought a 7200 or size that is not in
this list it may be the problem.

It would have been nice of them to tell us in advance right?

If it is not the problem, you probably have a motherboard problem that is
common in the invidia bastards bad chipsets.

Mine was tossing this kind of errors to start with (windows encountered an
unknown error and caint continue at boot)(I bought a refurb) and had to be
sent back to HP for service under warranty. They changed the memory,
motherboard, cpu, hard drive, and heatsink assembly all out in it.

Sadly the left the DVD drive which had tracking problem in it. This was
how I learned about the supported drives list.


Gnack
 
David Farber Inscribed thus:

I am servicing an HP dv2125nr notebook computer. The problem was that
it
came up with a blue screen while booting and said,
"unmountable_boot_volume."

I took the drive out and mounted it in my desktop pc via the on board
SATA controller. I booted to my system and ran a chkdsk and an
anti-virus scan on the notebook drive. It found some problems and
fixed them. I put the drive back in the notebook and it started
working again. So far so good.

I put the drive back in the desktop pc and made an image backup to my
internal IDE drive. Still, so far so good.

I bought a new Fujitsu hard drive off of ebay, received it, and
mounted it in my desktop pc thinking I could restore the image file
from hard disk to the new Fujitsu drive. However when I powered up the
pc, the pc speaker beeped once as it always does after posting, then
it froze at the screen where it displays the components attached to
the IDE and SATA controllers. After a few seconds, the screen went
blank and the system rebooted again. It stayed in this loop until I
had to manually remove the power. I was unable to get into the bios
settings. If I remove the new drive, of course everything is fine
again.

I called Fujitsu and told them the story and they said it could be a
firmware problem where it was only designed to operate in certain
systems. That was news to me. I never heard of a new, empty hard drive
being designed to only operate in specific systems.
Click to expand...
Sounds like bull. One reason I won't touch a Fujitsu drive.

Have any of you encountered a problem like this before? I doubt the
hard drive is defective but on the other hand, I can't think of any
other reasonable explanation.
Click to expand...
I've had the same rubbish spouted at me by Fujitsu in order to avoid
admitting their product is faulty.

By the way, if I put the new drive in the notebook and try to boot
with a utility cd, the same thing happens. It freezes on the HP logo
though it doesn't constantly reboot.

Thanks for your reply.
Click to expand...
The drive is faulty ! Send it back...

--
Best Regards:
Baron.
 
On Tue, 26 Jan 2010 15:39:27 -0800, "David Farber"
<farberbear.unspam@aol.com> wrote:


I bought a new Fujitsu hard drive off of ebay, ...
Click to expand...
I think I see the problem! <g>
 
On Tue, 26 Jan 2010 15:39:27 -0800, "David Farber"
<farberbear.unspam@aol.com>wrote:

I am servicing an HP dv2125nr notebook computer. The problem was that it
came up with a blue screen while booting and said,
"unmountable_boot_volume."
Click to expand...
Insert bootable Windows CD enter recovery console and type chkdsk /r

Don't know what your operating system is but the above is for XP.
Vista and 7 may have the same feature but I have not needed to recover
an unmountable boot volume in either. However I just did a Compaq
laptop and successfully recover the operating system. Chkdsk /r can
take a couple hours since it does an exhaustive search for and
recovers data from bad sectors using NTFS's journal. And it does it
while there is no disk acceleration drivers loaded.
 
Gnack Nol wrote:
On Tue, 26 Jan 2010 15:39:27 -0800, David Farber wrote:

I am servicing an HP dv2125nr notebook computer. The problem was
that it came up with a blue screen while booting and said,
"unmountable_boot_volume."


Original trimmed:


I have a G60-127NR which is simular to yours and during a service
issue session I learned that they don't support all SATA formats for
these machines.

Here is the list they gave me for mine.

The notebooks support the following 9.5mm (2.5-inch) Serial ATA hard
drives:

120GB (5400 rpm)

160GB (5400 rpm)

200GB (5400 rpm)

250GB (5400 rpm)

320GB (5400 rpm)

You will notice that the list f sizes is specific and no 7200rpm
drive is supported from this list. So if you bought a 7200 or size
that is not in this list it may be the problem.

It would have been nice of them to tell us in advance right?

If it is not the problem, you probably have a motherboard problem
that is common in the invidia bastards bad chipsets.

Mine was tossing this kind of errors to start with (windows
encountered an unknown error and caint continue at boot)(I bought a
refurb) and had to be sent back to HP for service under warranty.
They changed the memory, motherboard, cpu, hard drive, and heatsink
assembly all out in it.

Sadly the left the DVD drive which had tracking problem in it. This
was how I learned about the supported drives list.


Gnack
Click to expand...
The replacement drive is a SATA, 160GB, 5400rpm drive. That is on your list.

Thanks for your reply.
--
David Farber
David Farber's Service Center
L.A., CA
 
baron wrote:
David Farber Inscribed thus:

I am servicing an HP dv2125nr notebook computer. The problem was that
it
came up with a blue screen while booting and said,
"unmountable_boot_volume."

I took the drive out and mounted it in my desktop pc via the on board
SATA controller. I booted to my system and ran a chkdsk and an
anti-virus scan on the notebook drive. It found some problems and
fixed them. I put the drive back in the notebook and it started
working again. So far so good.

I put the drive back in the desktop pc and made an image backup to my
internal IDE drive. Still, so far so good.

I bought a new Fujitsu hard drive off of ebay, received it, and
mounted it in my desktop pc thinking I could restore the image file
from hard disk to the new Fujitsu drive. However when I powered up
the pc, the pc speaker beeped once as it always does after posting,
then it froze at the screen where it displays the components
attached to the IDE and SATA controllers. After a few seconds, the
screen went blank and the system rebooted again. It stayed in this
loop until I had to manually remove the power. I was unable to get
into the bios settings. If I remove the new drive, of course
everything is fine again.

I called Fujitsu and told them the story and they said it could be a
firmware problem where it was only designed to operate in certain
systems. That was news to me. I never heard of a new, empty hard
drive being designed to only operate in specific systems.

Sounds like bull. One reason I won't touch a Fujitsu drive.

Have any of you encountered a problem like this before? I doubt the
hard drive is defective but on the other hand, I can't think of any
other reasonable explanation.

I've had the same rubbish spouted at me by Fujitsu in order to avoid
admitting their product is faulty.

By the way, if I put the new drive in the notebook and try to boot
with a utility cd, the same thing happens. It freezes on the HP logo
though it doesn't constantly reboot.

Thanks for your reply.

The drive is faulty ! Send it back...
Click to expand...
It certainly looks that way.

Thanks for your reply.
--
David Farber
David Farber's Service Center
L.A., CA
 
Meat Plow wrote:
On Tue, 26 Jan 2010 15:39:27 -0800, "David Farber"
farberbear.unspam@aol.com>wrote:

I am servicing an HP dv2125nr notebook computer. The problem was
that it came up with a blue screen while booting and said,
"unmountable_boot_volume."

Insert bootable Windows CD enter recovery console and type chkdsk /r

Don't know what your operating system is but the above is for XP.
Vista and 7 may have the same feature but I have not needed to recover
an unmountable boot volume in either. However I just did a Compaq
laptop and successfully recover the operating system. Chkdsk /r can
take a couple hours since it does an exhaustive search for and
recovers data from bad sectors using NTFS's journal. And it does it
while there is no disk acceleration drivers loaded.
Click to expand...
The original drive is working ok now. I'm using XP. But it's over five years
old and I'd rather replace it now before it crashes for good.

Thanks for your reply.
--
David Farber
David Farber's Service Center
L.A., CA
 
On Wed, 27 Jan 2010 11:25:22 -0800, "David Farber"
<farberbear.unspam@aol.com>wrote:

Meat Plow wrote:
On Tue, 26 Jan 2010 15:39:27 -0800, "David Farber"
farberbear.unspam@aol.com>wrote:

I am servicing an HP dv2125nr notebook computer. The problem was
that it came up with a blue screen while booting and said,
"unmountable_boot_volume."

Insert bootable Windows CD enter recovery console and type chkdsk /r

Don't know what your operating system is but the above is for XP.
Vista and 7 may have the same feature but I have not needed to recover
an unmountable boot volume in either. However I just did a Compaq
laptop and successfully recover the operating system. Chkdsk /r can
take a couple hours since it does an exhaustive search for and
recovers data from bad sectors using NTFS's journal. And it does it
while there is no disk acceleration drivers loaded.

The original drive is working ok now. I'm using XP. But it's over five years
old and I'd rather replace it now before it crashes for good.

Thanks for your reply.
Click to expand...
No problem. The Unmountable Boot Volume Stop Error can also be caused
by the laptop hardware drivers. Compaq has documented this and has a
service pack. There may or may not be a real problem with the drive
considering HP and Compaq the same company.
 
PeterD wrote:
On Tue, 26 Jan 2010 15:39:27 -0800, "David Farber"
farberbear.unspam@aol.com> wrote:


I bought a new Fujitsu hard drive off of ebay, ...

I think I see the problem! <g
Click to expand...
The seller agreed to exchange the Fujitsu with a Samsung drive. The Samsung
drive worked without a hitch. Problem solved.

Thanks for your reply.
--
David Farber
David Farber's Service Center
L.A., CA
 
On Tue, 2 Feb 2010 13:33:27 -0800, "David Farber"
<farberbear.unspam@aol.com>wrote:

PeterD wrote:
On Tue, 26 Jan 2010 15:39:27 -0800, "David Farber"
farberbear.unspam@aol.com> wrote:


I bought a new Fujitsu hard drive off of ebay, ...

I think I see the problem! <g

The seller agreed to exchange the Fujitsu with a Samsung drive. The Samsung
drive worked without a hitch. Problem solved.

Thanks for your reply.
Click to expand...
Back several years ago I refused to accept new Dell Power Edge servers
with Fujitsu SCSI drives. I was back and forth to two sited I ordered
brand new servers for only to have drives fail in both in little more
than a week. I spent many hours I couldn't bill for changing them out
to Seagate drives.
 
Meat Plow Inscribed thus:

On Tue, 2 Feb 2010 13:33:27 -0800, "David Farber"
farberbear.unspam@aol.com>wrote:

PeterD wrote:
On Tue, 26 Jan 2010 15:39:27 -0800, "David Farber"
farberbear.unspam@aol.com> wrote:


I bought a new Fujitsu hard drive off of ebay, ...

I think I see the problem! <g

The seller agreed to exchange the Fujitsu with a Samsung drive. The
Samsung drive worked without a hitch. Problem solved.

Thanks for your reply.

Back several years ago I refused to accept new Dell Power Edge servers
with Fujitsu SCSI drives. I was back and forth to two sited I ordered
brand new servers for only to have drives fail in both in little more
than a week. I spent many hours I couldn't bill for changing them out
to Seagate drives.
Click to expand...
Fujitsu are crap drives, crap service. Avoid !

--
Best Regards:
Baron.
 
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