DV9000 - Installing 2nd HDD causes no boot

I have a DV9000 - AMD Turion 2.0 GHz, 4GB ram. Its one of the first Dv9000s so I don't know a full model number

I just received a new hard drive (Western Digital 320GB 7200 RPM SATA-2) as a gift and have been struggling to set it as the second drive in my computer. My other drive is an 80GB SATA-1 (Hitachi I think) that came with the computer. When both drives are in place, the BIOS screen with the HP logo comes up and then the system sits there forever or goes to a black screen forever. In the bios I cannot run the disk self check on either disk.

Separately, each disk functions. I used G-Parted on the new drive to see if formatted vs unformatted would help, but have not done a disk check, and I am currently using the old drive to write this post. I did a bit of searching and found that I was not the only person to suffer from this problem but none of the threads I read had any solutions (they were however, by no means recent).

Is it just not possible to run two different drives on the DV9000 or is it an issue with SATA-1 vs SATA-2? I would really like to keep the old drive for storage but I guess four times the old drive capacity is better than nothing.

 

Can you change boot options in the bios?
Is is set to raid or wrong boot device?

 

The problem is modern drives featuring SATA II interface (3 Gb/s) wont allow DV9000 to boot if the first drive is older SATA 1 (1.5 Gb/s). Though the machine does boot if the new drive is installed in the first bay. The solution is to force the new drive to run only in 1.5 Gb/s mode that is typically done with a jumper on the back side of the drive. The jumper block adjacent to the SATA interface connector on SATA 300MB/sec drives can be used to force the drive into SATA 150MB/sec mode for use with older SATA controllers that only work with SATA 150MB/sec drives.

This is for Seagate hard drive .

This is Western Digital desktop hard drive solution:
Why is my Second Generation Serial ATA hard drive not detected by my First Generation Serial ATA controller or motherboard?

This is Western Digital laptop SATA II hard drive , there is no jumper setting to lock to 150MB/s mode.

 

No, the bios is very poor and does not let you choose which drive to boot from. It always boots from bay 1. Also there is no raid feature for this laptop that I know of nor are there any pertaining options in the bios

The machine does not boot if both drives are installed regardless of which drive is in the first bay. I cannot boot from CD if both drives are installed no matter which drive is first.

So am I basically screwed with trying to get both drives going at the same time?

 

Try your new WD at first bay and your old drive at second bay. It may work.
Or simply sell your WD on Ebay and buy another SATA I hard drive.

 

That's not what I wanted to hear but never the less, exactly what I expected. Oh well, I guess I will just save all my important stuff to some cds and reinstall to the WD drive. It does boot with just that drive in so I guess its a problem with the controller trying to work with the two different interfaces. If I ever find another Sata-2 drive I will test with two of the same type at least.

Thank you for your help!

 

What they did is correct in perspective of engineering design. Bay 1 is designed as boot device because it's closer to CPU fan than Bay 2, so fresh air flow is stronger to absorb heat from the hard drive. The left side of your palmres, where the first hard drive is under, is always warmer than the right side. This hard drive is under continuos operations of read and write, thus generates a lot of heat. It will be a disater if they let user choose the second hard drive as a boot device. Weaker air flow will cause the right side of your palmrest at a hot level that unbearable.
That's why first hard drive is only your option as boot device is not a poor bios configuration.

 

By no means am I suggesting I want to boot from the second drive bay. I was only stating that there was no choice. From a technical standpoint I see no reason for the limitation as in this model there is no connection to the CPU/video card heat sink so it really doesn't help with head dissipation.

The reason the bios is not that great is that it is proprietary and very, very locked down. Not that there is much you can do with a laptop bios but HP has a history of causing headaches such as having a white list of approved wireless cards. Switch out the one it came with to a non-approved model and the system will not boot.

 

Actually, I have empirical evidence to the contrary. If you search you can find my forum thread on this. I installed a dummy CF card via an adapter to bay 1 because (stupid) HP only allows you to boot from bay 1. I moved the primary hard drive to bay 2, and installed a dummy boot up file on the CF card to trick Windows into thinking bay 2 is bay 1. Net result, my only hard drive is in bay 2.

Hard drive runs cooler now, as does the GPU and CPU. The primary heat generator in the system I think is the GPU, which is under the left palm rest with bay 1. Putting those together frequently led to unacceptably high temperatures on my hard disk (occasionally exceeding the drive's operating spec).

It is a poor bios configuration, and poor engineering.