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    HDD upgrade in Toshiba, please help !

    Discussion in 'Hardware Components and Aftermarket Upgrades' started by Koypiout, Jan 14, 2005.

  1. Koypiout

    Koypiout Newbie

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    Hi,
    I am the owner a Toshiba Satellite 5100-603. It is a great machine overall, except for the hard drive which is slow ! I decided to upgrade it to an Hitachi Travelstar 7K60. I received the latter yesterday. I thought it would be a plug-and-play operation. Unfortunately, I can't get it to function properly. The Toshiba Recovery DVD supplied with my machine (it contains a Windows XP ghost image) stops at 100% (!) and then stops responding. After a reboot, the drive is still empty.
    A friend gave me an XP Pro CD (legal version). The setup prgram starts off normally but then tells me it cannot create the Windows directory ! The disk seems to refuse access ! At the DOS prompt, I have full access to the disk. I created a directory using the md command successfully. I then tried to write a file on the disk. I did so by using the edit command. Again, it worked but it took 15 seconds to save the file (of a few bytes) !

    I am truly desperate. I tried everything I could think of. I used fdisk and format a dozen of times ! I also flashed my BIOS in vain. I used an Hitachi tool to determine if the drive was faulty and it is in pristine condition ! I thought that maybe it was underpowered or there was an interface conflict but the utility told me everything was fine !
    I have absolutely no lead ! PLEASE help ! I called the Toshiba help line but they are underqualified (well, at least the two person I spoke to)! I now think that the online community is the only source of expertise qualified enough to help me !
    I read somewhere that there were incompatibilities between ATA-6 drives (my Hitachi) and ATA-5 compliant computers (my Toshiba). Is that the case? The Hitachi utility told me the drive was working in ATA-5 mode which seems to indicate that this is not the problem.

    Even if you don't know the answer any lead is welcome !
    Thanks!
     
    Koypiout, Jan 14, 2005
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  2. Koypiout

    Koypiout Newbie

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    Nevermind... it seems the drive was defective afterall. I ran the integrity test again on the following day and it revealed the drive was physically defective ! So much for reliability !
     
    Koypiout, Jan 15, 2005
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