Unsolved
This post is more than 5 years old
2 Posts
0
48664
New Hard Drive not recognized by BIOS
i am trying to help a friend who is deployed in IRaq, the family Insperion-XPS laptop crashed, the Fuji PATA HD was fried. Replaced it with a new Seagate 160GB PATA HD but bios refuses to see it. HD is OK, i installed, partitioned, formatted, even put an OS on it via another laptop. Drive spins up in Dell laptop, still will not recognize. Seagate support suggests something, possibly propriatary in Dell BIOS is blocking. Research on forums mentions removing optical drive too to reset entire IDE channel, but this DVD drive is integral to case, would require case disassembly (i think). Anyone else with ideas? This family cannot afford a new laptop or expensive service calls, and needs laptop to communicate with Dad. I sure could use some extra brains on this problem....Thanks
husky0894
1.6K Posts
0
November 26th, 2008 12:00
Does the BIOS see the drive? If not, did you transfer the blade connector from the original drive to the new one?
Hanspuppa
799 Posts
0
November 26th, 2008 13:00
husky0894 suggest a good point. Also, it may be possible that the motherboard was damaged at the time of the hard drive failure or the motherboard caused the hard drive failure.
If you could locate another used hard drive for purposes of checking only, this might confirm a defective board.
Just a thought.
Hanspuppa
799 Posts
0
November 26th, 2008 13:00
Hello vcbqq, As far as I know, there is nothing unique about a Dell Laptop that would prevent installing a normal IDE or SATA hard drive, depending on the type required.
There is an adapter on some laptops that are required to connect a hard drive to some laptops.
If you still have the original Dell hard drive, I would look at the connector end and see if there is an adapter on it.
If so, you would need to remove it and install it on the new hard drive in order to make connection to the motherboard.
If we had the model number of the Laptop, we could research it and see if it requires this adapter.
If it requires the adapter and you don't still have it, you would have to contact dell and see if you could acquire one from Dell.
Hey husky0894, Thanks for this info. You were posting at the same time as me, so your info is verified.
Hope this helps.
vcbqq
2 Posts
0
November 26th, 2008 13:00
Actually I did this already. Both the new drive and a drive out of one of my personal laptop, neither was recognized. Both however work fine in my old HP laptop. So i am thinking one of 3 things; something unique with the installation of hard drives on Dell laptops, something propriatary in BIOS, or damaged connector/damaged motherboard IDE (the optical drive works fine). Huskey mentions a blade connector...is there a special adapter between the HD and the female IDE port on the motherboard? The pins on my HD do not extend beyond the carrier, but it all looks like it sould connect properly. I need nothing else to attach this drive to other laptops.
husky0894
1.6K Posts
0
November 26th, 2008 13:00
If you can see pins on the back of the drive, the adapter is missing - yes, there is a blade adapter that is required to connect the drive to the system. Without it, the drive isn't connected, which is why you won't see it.
This is the part:
http://www.parts-people.com/index.php?action=item&id=838