You haven't done any process of elimination to test if in fact the Seagate IS buggy. I sincerely doubt it, since that's the brand I use almost exclusively in my systems and I have never ever had a problem. First, TRY the Seagate somehow as master on the secondary IDE, disconnect the DVD-rom for now. If it works there... Second, is the IDE cable firmly connected to the MB? Change the Primary IDE cable, it may have been damaged while moving things around, that commonly happens with older 80-conductor cables.. And while we're at it, was the memory disturbed? Try reseating it, often the Dimms are bumped while installing a new drive. Third, another thing often overlooked, maybe the power supply is marginal, and the new drive puts the power demand over the top. One final point, was the failure of the previous drive completely self-caused, and not a result of something else, the same issue now affecting the Seagate? Trust me, the Seagate drive is good.
Ok, here is what i have done so far:
1. Removed the Seagate from my system and booted with only the Hitachi drive in master. Left DVD-roms etc connected on other IDE channels, and left my SCSI drives connected. BIOS detects fine. System boots fine.
2. Removed DVD-roms etc, and assigned the Seagate to my secondry IDE channel as primary (so the Hitachi and Seagate are on different IDE ports). Left SCSI drives still connected. BIOS detects fine. System has same problem on cold boot.
3. Kept same config as 2., however set both Hitachi drive and Seagate to auto-select (aka cable select). BIOS detected fine. System has same problem on cold boot.
4. Kept same config as 3., but switched Hitachi to secondry IDE, and Seagate to primary IDE. BIOS detected fine. System has same problem on cold boot.
5. Removed all devices, except for Video & Keyboard & RAM, moved Hitachi back to primary IDE and set to master, moved Seagate to secondry IDE set to master. BIOS detected all changes fine. System has same problem with cold boot.
6. Kept same config as 5., however removed RAM modules replaced with spare DIMM. Once again BIOS detected fine. System still has problem with cold boot.
7. Kept same config as 6., however forced CPU to run a slower speed in BIOS. Still problem with cold boot.
8. Kept same config as 7., however removed spare DIMM and replaced with original DIMMS. Still same problem with cold boot.
9. Kept same config as 8., however replaced PSU with a spare. Still same problem.
10. Kept same config as 9., however put original PSU back in, and replaced the ATA133 cable for an older ATA66 cable on the Seagate channel. BIOS detected fine again. System still had same problem with cold boot.
11. Took a hammer to the Seagate, and left it in pieces (hehe just kidding), I actually gave up, and rebuilt my PC.
The Maxtor i had previously was due for a failure, had it for ages, and to be fair had quite a fair bit of abuse, removed many times to transfer data to others PCs. And just to note, my PSU is an Antec 480watt True Power.
I don't doubt Seagate are great, I've heard many good things, thats why I bought it in the first place.