Internal Hard Drive Problems

Question

Ok, here's the deal.
I have a macbook pro. Its a 2.16 that I bought back in the beginning of 2006. I am currently running Snow Leopard on it. I have used up pretty much all the space on my 120 gig hard drive. I decided it was time to get a new hard drive. I got the 640GB Western Digital "Scorpio Blue" one off of newegg. The model number is WD6400BEVT. First, I transferred my entire hard drive onto an external hd (My Book) using a program called Carbon Copy Cloner. It took a couple of hours to transfer everything, but no big deal, it got done.
Next, I took my laptop apart and installed the new hard drive. I re-hooked up everything and I also plugged in the external hard drive so I could boot directly from it. I turned on my laptop and booted from the external drive. Everything worked fine and the computer recognized the new 640GB hd. I then used Carbon Copy Cloner to get everything from the external onto the new hard drive I had just installed. I shut down my laptop.
I then unhooked my external hd and tried to boot like normal using the internal hd. While holding the "option" button, I wasn't able to boot from, or even see my internal hd. I tried turning the laptop on and off a couple times hoping that it would give me options and it didn't. I then tried plugging in my external so I could boot from that hd, but when I turned on my computer, it didn't give me any boot options. Didn't recognize my internal or external hd.
I was confused and thought that maybe a connection was loose or something, so I took the whole thing apart again and put it back together. Same result. My buddy was over helping me with everything, and he has a newer macbook pro (not sure on the year, but it had the black keypad and the hatch on the bottom that reveals the battery and the hd so you don't have to tear apart the entire computer to get to the hd). We decided to install the new 640gb internal hd into his computer to try it. After it was installed, we turned on the laptop (his) and booted from the internal hd we had just installed in it. It worked just fine and my desktop and all my files and such showed up on his screen. This was bittersweet, because (in our minds) that meant that the hard drive was working just fine and the copying program had worked how it was supposed to, but it also angered us because we couldn't get it to work in my macbook pro.
We attempted again to install the new hd into my laptop and got the same result that was making us mad earlier, no boot options, just a light white screen. I thought maybe it was the screen connection the entire time, but you could see and use the mouse, there was just nothing to click on.
I told my roommate of this problem and he thought that maybe this laptop just can't handle a SATA 3.0, and my laptop originally came with a 1.5 SATA hd (I believe?) This might explain why it worked on my buddy's newer macbook pro and not on mine, but I'm not sure. Any help or ideas would be greatly appreciated!

Answer 1

Thanks for the update with extra information, It_crabby,
(My suggestion wasn't that your problem wasn't the same, but rather that without additional information it was impossible to know - we see many, many people who think they have the same issue as someone else, only to find out later that their circumstances are substantially different. Without the excellent additional material you subsequently provided it was impossible to know if this was the case with you. There are lots of reasons why one or another HD may not work.)
The HP Launcher "ghost" is interesting. This usually appears with disks that have previously been fitted in an Hewlett Packard external drive enclosure and relates to HP's "Simple Save" processes. Perhaps yours is one that was originally intended for this purpose that got diverted because of the arrival of a new model or somesuch. The vendor may be able to tell you.
I wouldn't be at all surprised if it is the cause of your particular problem and I'm afraid it may not be possible to actually overcome it.
It is easy enough to "hide" it when the disk is used as an external, non-boot, drive on a Mac - from a web post that is now no longer there:
+1) Go to Applications+
+2) Click on Utilities+
+3) Open AppleScript Editor+
+4) Copy and past this coding+
+tell application "Finder"+
+if exists "HP Launcher" then+
+do shell script "diskutil unmount /Volumes/HP\\ Launcher/"+
+end if+
+end tell+
+5) Save as an application. -use whatever name you wish, such as "HPUnmount"+
+6) Go to System Preferences...+
+7) Click on accounts+
+8) Click Login Items+
+9) Click the Plus sign to add an application, then select the file you created.+
The trouble is this that this approach will only work once you have got the normal boot process well and truly underway and the "Finder" is in control. It won't disable it during the boot process itself and unfortunately it seems to be "taking over" at this stage, preventing use of the drive as a boot drive.
The second problem is that, according to many posts I've seen, it can't actually be removed through partitioning / reformatting etc by normal mortals. THis is because it is apparently incorporated in the drive's firmware , rather than a "normal" disk partition. (see http://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Other-Desktop-PC-questions/HP-Simplesave-500gb-USB- 2-0/td-p/163205 and "Max from Toronto"'s comment at http://www.chipchick.com/2009/09/hp_simplesave.html )
There may just possibly be some way of overcoming the problem by hacking the Mac's own Boot EFI file, but you'd need a much gamer, and more knowledgeable, person than me to play around with that, and the consequences of getting it wrong could be very nasty! Even this may not be possible if the code is actually embed in a ROM on the drive that is automatically accessed first when it starts up. Perhaps HP or WD's technical staff could deal with the problem, but I suspect they would charge you for the privilege.
My suggestion would be that you take the drive back to the vendor and either ask for a replacement that hasn't been set up for use in an HP external drive or ask for your money back.
Cheers
Rod