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65397
April 23rd, 2014 17:00
Inspiron 1525 not recognizing new hard drive
Hello all.
I recently purchased a new hard drive for my Dell Inspiron 1525. The old one broke because the laptop was dropped to the ground. The new hard drive is a WD Blue 320 GB hard drive. Upon installing the new drive, I was met with a message right after the BIOS stating there was no hard drive detected and that I should attempt to reseat the drive. I did so three times, but it still cannot find the hard drive. I double-checked to make sure the connections in the laptop weren't damaged somehow by re-installing the old hard drive. The old drive "worked", in that it was able to boot so clearly the problem is with the new drive. I'm perfectly able to boot the computer from other sources. I also do have the latest BIOS update for this laptop model.
The seller I bought it from left the possbility of a return open, but I wanted to at least exhaust all options I had in trying to get this new drive recognized somehow. The drive itself was purchased from this Amazon listing: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001QWTTGC/ref=oh_details_o03_s00_i00?ie=UTF8&psc=1. As you can see, it does list the 1525 as compatible with it.
Any help would be very much appreciated. Thank you in advance.
Raczo
105 Posts
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April 23rd, 2014 17:00
You have to initialize the drive. Connect it to a working Windows compute, open the Windows disk manager and follow the instructions.
TheAnt317
7 Posts
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April 23rd, 2014 18:00
How exactly would I do that? I don't have another laptop to connect it to. That seems really unnecessary as well. Why would this be any different from connecting a new HDD to a PC where all you have to do it hook in the connections and it's good to go?
TheAnt317
7 Posts
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April 23rd, 2014 18:00
I'm really not willing to buy an adapter to use once and then never again.
Raczo
105 Posts
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April 23rd, 2014 18:00
You can connect the disk to a USB port using a SATA/USB adapter. Initialize it as MBR or GPT, according to the type of computer you are using, BIOS or UEFI.
That is the procedure that I follow. Maybe it´s not necessary in your case.
ejn63
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April 23rd, 2014 19:00
If you can, try the drive in another system. If it is recognized there, AND you've connected it securely to the system, then the fall damaged more than just the hard drive - likely the SATA controller on the mainboard. If that is the case, you'll need to replace the mainboard.
TheAnt317
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April 23rd, 2014 22:00
How would I go about connecting it to something else that's not a laptop?
As I said, the laptop works just fine otherwise. I ran the BIOS's onboard diagnostics and it noted nothing else wrong aside from detecting no hard drive.
ejn63
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April 24th, 2014 05:00
SATA notebook drives use exactly the same connectors (at least the one your system uses does; newer drives are different) as desktop SATA drives - you can plug the drive into a desktop computer to see if it's recognized there.
TheAnt317
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April 24th, 2014 10:00
Thank you for telling me that. I've never done anything with laptop drives before and it just looked so tiny compared to a PC HDD that I figured it had different connectors.
I plugged the HDD into my PC and it was working just fine. I managed to install Windows onto the drive and then plugged it back into the laptop. It still did not detect the drive. So, I think I'm out of options here.
TheAnt317
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April 24th, 2014 16:00
Turns out I actually did find a way to fix it, albeit it very strange.
Basically, another user found that HDD's that Dell ships the laptops with are about 3mm's thicker than most other SATA laptop HDD's. He remedied his problem by folding a piece of paper and slipping it under the drive bay to get the connections to line up with each other. And that ended up working for me as well.
Raczo
105 Posts
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April 24th, 2014 16:00
Dell don´t use special disks. The height of a 2.5 in disk can be either 7 mm or 9.5 mm. Buy a disk with the same dimension as the original, or check that your computer can use both types.
TheAnt317
7 Posts
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April 24th, 2014 17:00
I see. Well, to be fair I had no idea that they came in different sizes as this is the first time I replaced a laptop HDD. Also, I don't know that I would have been able to know in advance what the thickness of the drive was. The one that I bought did not mention a thickness either, only saying that it was compatible with Inspiron 1525.