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[Kent Baxley <737836@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/737836

Title:
  OS fails to boot certain SATA drives in AHCI mode.

Status in The Dell Project:
  Confirmed
Status in Canonical HWE Somerville Project:
  New

Bug description:
  BTO: 10.10 A02
  Platform:  Krug Problem has so far been observed on Krug, but the other platforms (Vida and Macallan) share common components and BIOS code and may also be affected.

  Summary:  With certain 512 sector and 4k Sector Drives in 512e mode,
  the systems fail to boot after installing the Operating System.

  The issue has been observed on two Seagate 4Ke drives and one 4Ke
  Hitachi drive with the following model numbers and sizes:

  ST9500423AS 500GB
  ST250LT007  250GB
  HTS547564A9E384 640GB

  One 512B Hard Drive from Hitachi was also found to be problematic:

  HTS723232A7A64  320GB

  With the Problem drives, the following is observed with these BIOS
  settings on the Krug / Latitude systems:

  AHCI Mode - The Factory Image downloads and appears to install fine,
  but afterward the systems won't boot the OS.  We are dropped to a grub prompt or a black screen with blinking cursor.

  Raid On - Works without issue (Macallan has the RaidOn option, Krug
  does not).

  ATA Mode - Works without issue.

  Natty also appears to be affected by this as well.  We get similar
  symptoms where the OS doesn't boot afer a seemingly fine installation.

  Steps to reproduce:
  1) Install Maverick or Natty onto one of the above disks.
  2) Reboot

  Actual result:  At this stage, the system is either dropped to a black screen (as observed in the factory installations), and if Grub is installed to the MBR of the affected drives in AHCI mode, we are dropped to a grub propmpt.
  Switching to either ATA mode or Raid On (in selected systems) allows the OS to boot just fine.

  Expected result:  Operating System boots regardless of the Mode in the
  BIOS with these hard disks.

  The drive that I have with me in the Krug is a:

  Seagate Momentus 500GB SATA disk.  The model appears to be ST9500423AS
  with a firmware revision of 0001DEM1