I first tried this on the Apple forum because I thought there might be Apple hardware warranty issues. There were a lot of suggestions, but no cure.
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2325720&tstart=0The essence of the story is that I purchased a 1TB Seagate ST31000528AS Media hard drive (3year warranty) for my main boot drive about 3 months ago. Two months later it suddenly died. I then purchased as a replacement a 1TB Enterprise grade Seagate ST31000340NS Media drive (5 year warranty). Shortly after installation, I began experiencing a problem I've never seen before. Upon pressing the power button, I get a light-gray screen with nothing on it. It will go on indefinitely without booting. I've tried a lot of things to make sure there isn't a software issue. (see the Apple forum link above). I've had the replacement drive three weeks and the problem has been with me from the start. I've had many Seagate drives over the years (the Cheetah was my favorite) without any problems. Suddenly, I've been bitten twice in a row. The drive will boot every time when I press the option key immediately after the power button. The Seagate drive is shown as the option and things boot normally. I've tried several loops of the extended Apple Hardware Test with no problems reported. Disk Utility plus DiskWarrior get me one boot upon pressing the power button and then the gray screen is back for the next boot attempt. There is no problem doing restart from the Apple menu or from the Startup Disk in System preferences. I've offered to swap the new Seagate for an HItachi with the same capacity and warranty, but OWC hasn't replied yet. Does anyone have any idea what is going on with this gray screen problem?
