Travelstar in HP 4535?

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Licensed to Quill

is there anything in th eBIOS of a Pavilion 4535 which woiudl prevent an IBM
Travelstar being seen on boot up?

It is neither seen on POST, identified or seen in setup of the BIOS. And
when I put it in the computer (with a 2.5 to 3.5 adapter), the whole
computer stops working and stops even seeing the disc drive so that I can
boot from it an dlook at what drives are supposed to be there.

The drive is a 30 gig ATA/IDE 4200RPM 5V 1 Amp drive. Is there some limit
on size or other specification in the 4535 BIOS which would do this??

I have tried it alone, with other drives I know to be working, jumpered as
Drive 0 or drive 1 or cable select and both ways around in how the
Travelstar is connected to the adapter so that isnt the problem
 
On the seventh day, Licensed to Quill wrote...
is there anything in th eBIOS of a Pavilion 4535 which woiudl prevent an IBM
Travelstar being seen on boot up?
Click to expand...

Not that I know of.
It is neither seen on POST, identified or seen in setup of the BIOS. And
when I put it in the computer (with a 2.5 to 3.5 adapter),
Click to expand...

this is a potential risk. Plugin such an adapter the wrong way and you've
most certainly just toasted your harddisk. Are you sure you connected it in
the right way?
the whole
computer stops working and stops even seeing the disc drive so that I can
boot from it an dlook at what drives are supposed to be there.

The drive is a 30 gig ATA/IDE 4200RPM 5V 1 Amp drive. Is there some limit
on size or other specification in the 4535 BIOS which would do this??
Click to expand...

I don't know of any, and then, of course, it's always possible. In case
your current hard disk has a size of below 30gigs, you should get a larger
one just for testing. What does your BIOS tell you about its age?
I have tried it alone, with other drives I know to be working, jumpered as
Drive 0 or drive 1 or cable select and both ways around in how the
Travelstar is connected to the adapter so that isnt the problem
Click to expand...

IMO you are currently either facing the death of the drive you might have
just toasted or you are experiencing the 32gigs BIOS bug. Only way to be
sure is to test a drive larger than 30gigs on your Pavillon, then you know
the issue.

HTH
 
Sorry, crosspost without flup2. Please respond to this post as I've
corrected this.
 
This is beginning to sound potentially serious: I bought the connectors very
cheaply on E-Bay and they came without the pin blanked out so I presumed
that one connected them by marrying up the non-connected socket to the
non-existent pin. That didnt work in any configuration whatsoever. Then
someone on another group suggested that the drive might be plugged in the
wrong way so I turned it round and it made no difference.

I suppose I will have to enquire with IBM if it is possible to do fry a
drive by connecting it the wrong way, - asking diplomatically whether
connecting one of their drives the wrong way around will actually toast THIS
drive which wasnt working before I connected it either way

Do you have any particular knowledge of the pin configuration on an ATA/IDE
drive such that you actually know that (for example) a socket which is
sensitive will burn out the drive when connected the wrong way around to a
pin which is powereed or are you assuming that the drive might be toasted
just becasue the drive obviously wasnt designed to be connected that way?
Manufacturing a connector without a blanked out plug so that this can be
done does tend to suggest that no ill effects can be assumed from conecting
it the wrong way, - although obviously it wont work.

Otherwise it is a case for negative feedback to deter anyone else from
dealing with a manufacturer who lets their articles toast drives.

I bought it as a firewire drive and plugged it into a Mac and it worked
immediately. When I tried to plug it into a PC it was never seen at all as
anything (the PC card was but the drive on the other side of it wasn't: Even
when powered which it neednt be on a Mac).

So ulimately when I accidentally broke the firewire casing and circuit board
of the drive trying to get it to work, I took out the 2.5 drive and have
been trying to use it as such ever since. I was going to use it to clone my
12 gig drive on my main computer which his running out of space BADLY to the
30 gig drive. But actually I have never seen any evidence that this 30 gig
drive was ever working in the last six or nine months since I did the
initial test on the Mac, when the blue light went on on the drive and it
worked perfectly. (When I finally discovered about the PC card needing
powering and then managed to get the blue light to go on on the drive
connected to a PC, it didnt make any difference to whether the drive was
recognised at all. I was then told that firewire is exceptionally
problematical on PCs and isnt just a given, even on XP)
 
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