Gateway M460 Doesn't POST with Seagate Hard Drive

I have a Gateway M460 laptop in which the hard drive went south rapidly due to SMART error detection. I was able to pull all my files from the hard drive using Recuva by connecting it to another computer via a USB adapter before it really got into trouble. I wanted to upgrade the hard drive on the machine to a 80GB (the maximum size per Gateway's website). This machine has a PATA/IDE type drive. I have the restore disks for this machine here ready to go. The machine will POST with the old HDD installed, but the restore disc is unable to reload the HDD due to numerous errors and failure. Fair enough. But the point is that the machine does POST. I can access the BIOS and the machine 'spins' up the old HDD.

Enter the new 80GB Seagate drive. This is a brand new drive. If I connect the drive to the machine, the computer will not POST. Immediately upon pressing the 'power' button, the second light from the right in the status indicators turns purple and the machine just sits there. This purple light is the module indicator and is supposed to indicate that the module is ready to swap. Whatever that means. No BIOS, no spin-up of the hard drive, no access of the CD drive which is primary.....nada, zip, goose egg.

Take that new hard drive and connect it via a USB adapter and the drive can be partitioned, formatted, accessed, anything you want on another computer. I used Partition Wizard to do all this stuff. I even made the drive partition 40GB to match the size of the original drive and made the partition 'active'. Put the drive back into the M460....purple light on power up and .....no POST, no BIOS, no spin-up of the hard drive, nada, zip, goose egg.

I have removed the battery, removed the CD drive. In deperation I swapped the new hard drive with an older 30GB that I had laying around and the restore discs run flawlessly. I've even updated the BIOS to the latest version when I'm able to access the BIOS with either the original drive or my 30Gb stand-in connected.

I also tried a 100GB drive partitioned down to 40GB. Same purple light.

I've tried all of the jumper settings (master, slave and cable select) without any difference (on the 80Gb and the 100GB). I'm at my wits end. What am I missing? Even if the M460 doesn't support an 80GB hard drive, wouldn't it be fine partitioned as a 40GB hard drive? The original hard drive is a Toshiba. But that shouldn't make any difference. Is there a known incompatibility with Gateway and Seagate? I've never come across this issue before. I need some help and you folks are the best resource. Your thoughts and help are greatly appreciated!

 

I too went through a similar situation with 4 7200.4's 500GB SATA2 Seagate 2.5" HDD's.

Returned them all for a WD 500GB BEVT Scorpio Blue with no hiccups since.

A colleage bought the same drive (probably even from the same batch) and installed it in his MacBook Pro. Has had no problems for the last 2+ yrs.

I would return this drive and try another brand.

Or, see if a firmware is available for it first (but I wouldn't bother, tbh).

Good luck.

 

Thanks for the reply "Tiller". It may come to that (getting another brand of hard drive). I've never run into compatibility issues like this before. Ugh. Thanks again.

 

I've never seen that before...hard drives aren't necessary for POST... I'll keep that in mind when diagnosing laptops.

 

Hi all, just a note to say I'm still working on this issue and will report back with any solutions. Just want to keep everyone updated. A lot of forum entries seem to just fall off the grid because the original poster never finalizes the result. Thanks for all your input. Stay tuned.

 

Hi all. The saga continues. The machine is running with the old 30GB hard drive that I pulled off the shelf and cloned with Apricorn EZ Gig II. The machine is running flawlessly. Cloning the 80GB Seagate resulted in the 'purple' light and a stalled POST as in the beginning of my journey. No solution has been found yet. Gateway is unwilling to address the issue, and no one is reading the Seagate forum postings. I'll keep you all in the loop. Thanks for your replies.

 

Hi All:

This posts can be closed. There is an undocumented incompatibility between the Gateway M460 laptops and the Seagate Momentus drives. The issue remains unresolved. Neither Gateway not Seagate is interested in addressing the issue. Thanks to all of you for your posted replies, insight and suggestions.

Regards,
RUOnline

 

Thank you for coming back with this latest update.

Many people are surprised that incompatibilities still exist; but I've learned long ago that 'current' state-of-the-art (whatever time period 'current', currently is...) never excludes the possibility of manufacturers simply aiming for the 'majority' and never 'everyone'.

Hope you can find a good replacement HDD (if you still need one) that shows better compatibility with your notebook.