Seagate 200 Gb HD replacement in iMac = 2 min. delay after wake up

Question

I replaced my factory Seagate 80Gb SATA (ST380013AS) with a 200 Gb SATA (ST3200827AS) hard drive. Ever since, my G5/1.8 GHz iMac freezes for two minutes after waking up. I've scoured Seagate's web site to see if I need to alter any settings, such as start up delay for RAID, but I couldn't find anything.
Initially I thought it may have been related to the 10.4.5 update or any of the security updates, but I did a clean install of the original 10.3.5 that came with the iMac and the wake up delay is still there. I also reinstalled my original 80Gb SATA hard drive and there was NO delay. So I conclude that there is some issue with the Seagate 200 Gb drive and OS X. Other than this annoying issue, the drive performs great.
I also noticed that 2 out of the 4 pins on the original 80Gb hard drive have a jumper on it. The new 200 Gb doesn't but the specs says to install a jumper to limit to 1.5 Gbits/sec on the same two pins. The jumper made no difference and I still have the 2 min. delay.
Has anyone else experience this ? Better yet, does anyone have a solution for this ?
G4/1.67 Powerbook, G5/1.8 iMac   Mac OS X (10.4.5)  
G4/1.67 Powerbook, G5/1.8 iMac   Mac OS X (10.4.5)  

Answer 1

I can't imagine any reason why MacOS Extended (Journaled) shouldn't be fine, or that the installer's erase would be any different from Disk Utility's, although Seagate's procedure does specifically specify using Disk Utility before continuing with the installation of OS X.
However, there may be a problem using 10.3.5's format routine with a drive running 10.4.x, since Tiger has introduced some subtle changes in the directory structure & (I think) D.U. wasn't updated for this until 10.3.9. If you can't resolve this issue any other way, it might be worth erasing with 10.4.x's D.U. & then re-installing 10.4.x, but I think this has a very low probability of success.
If you haven't already done so, you should run D.U.'s repair disk on the Seagate & Apple's Hardware test on the iMac to see if they turn up anything. Techtools (Pro or Deluxe) also does some disk checks, so try that if you have it. It is possible you have a defective drive, one that is having trouble spinning up or stabilizing until it warms up. I'm not sure any of these utilities will spot that kind of problem, but it is worth a try.
You could also keep Activity Monitor running & frontmost when you sleep the iMac, set to show disk activity. Look carefully at what it shows for drive data rates as your iMac comes out of sleep. If the data rate is very low, then slowly or suddenly ramps up to a high level sometime after you do anything that starts the spinner, it may indicate a drive problem.
Message was edited by: R C-R