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hello everyone, i was referred to this forum by the person that responded to my question when i posted it here on yahoo answers. the answer i recieved wasnt very helpful, the link to the dell website downloads something that is meant to be installed from an operating system, i cant do that because the computer wont recognize the drive. its a 500 gb seagate SATA drive. can anyone help? thanks in advance.
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Dell Inspiron latpop hard drive having trouble getting it to read a new drive
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#2
Posted 15 January 2010 - 05:47 AM
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Quote
I am trying to fix a laptop for a friend. She said she talked to Tech Support and they determined that she needed a new hard drive. We bought a new hard drive, and I installed it, and it didn't read it. I assumed this meant that the SATA port on the laptop was bad, so I ordered a drive caddy to accommodate a second hard drive. I installed the old drive in the second bay, and it works every now and then. I installed the new one in the second bay, and it says "No internal hard disk found. Try to reseat the drive." (not an exact quote but that's all the relevant information). The old drive also said the same thing when it wouldn't work, but it works occasionally. There are no Master/Slave options on the drives, and I didn't see any in the BIOS either. All I want to do now is install Windows XP Home edition on the new hard drive. Does anyone know whats wrong with this computer?
Welcome to the site squirrr3lsl4y3r,
If the BIOS cannot see the drive then either the port is fried, the hard drive is fried, or the drive isn't making contact with the sata/power connector.
Try this: If you take the new hard drive and push it into the first bay, power up the laptop, go into the BIOS, does it see the hard drive? If you take your other drive, swap it out in bay one, does the BIOS see that one? If both drives are seen, the possibility of the drive being bad is slim. Next, do the same thing in the second bay. Plug in one drive, go into the BIOS, see if the drive is there. If the drives are shown in the bios when in bay one, but are not shown in bay 2 we now know it isn't the drives.
Let me know what the results are and we can proceed based off that,
noop
#3
Posted 15 January 2010 - 05:58 AM
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well when i installed the old hard drive (containing a Windows Vista installation) it would give me the same error message, then boot the drive... idk what that means... tomorrow im going to install both of the drives in my sisters computer and see if they work in it. if the 500 gig works in her comp then ill format it in there and see if it will recognize it then. i will also see if i can get SATA port 1 to work at all. more info tomorrow, thanks.
btw, i noticed when you typed my name that you typed 3 R's in the middle... thats when i also noticed that i registered under squirrr3lsl4y3r instead of squirr3lsl4y3r lol.
btw, i noticed when you typed my name that you typed 3 R's in the middle... thats when i also noticed that i registered under squirrr3lsl4y3r instead of squirr3lsl4y3r lol.
This post has been edited by squirrr3lsl4y3r: 15 January 2010 - 06:12 AM
#4
Posted 15 January 2010 - 07:57 PM
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Oops lol Would you like me to change that for you?
Looking forward to your reply,
noop
Looking forward to your reply,
noop
#5
Posted 17 January 2010 - 09:12 PM
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Hello I believe what you need to install is an sata driver what windows are you installing? you could also try to set your sata to native mode in bios to see if that helps
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