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June 30th, 2014 13:00

Latitude C600 Hard Drive Installation and Partioning

I recently installed a 40GB Hard Drive in a relative's laptop that had been given to them without one. I followed all of the steps in the service manual to properly install the hard drive. I also made sure the hard drive is securely in place before plugging in the power cord and turning it on. When I turn it on a I get a boot error and it shows the hard drive is not recognized.


What are all of the necessary steps to properly install and and manually partition the hard drive before I can install a Linux OS?

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87.5K Posts

July 2nd, 2014 06:00

Yes, that's the problem - the drive is blank.  You must install an operating system onto it.

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87.5K Posts

June 30th, 2014 17:00

Did you install the blade adapter over the pins at the back of the drive?  If the system came without a hard drive, the adapter is likely missing - and without it the drive doesn't connect to the mainboard.

It's the part inside the plastic bag in this photo:

http://www.parts-people.com/index.php?action=item&id=68

27 Posts

July 1st, 2014 01:00

I do have the blade adapter covering the pins on the back of the hard drive connected. I made sure that the hard drive I ordered came with it. The caddy for I ordered for the hard drive also came with a blade apapter.

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July 1st, 2014 05:00

Next two things:

Does the BIOS see the hard drive (F2 at powerup)?

and

Is there a working CD/DVD drive in the system (if memory serves, on this model, the hard drive is slave to the CD/DVD drive - you must have a working optical drive in the system to see the hard drive)?

27 Posts

July 1st, 2014 15:00

I think the BIOS does see the hard drive at bootup because it shows "no boot sector on hard disk" when I turn it on. In the BIOS Menu it shows it as Primary Hard Drive: 40010 MB The CD/DVD drive is working properly as well.

I bought a used hard drive used from a seller on a popular site (not sure I can post the link or info here). Could it be the fact the hard drive was wiped clean and doesn't have an OS installed? Here is a picture of the info it shows after I set the time and date in the BIOS Menu (not the best picture quality):

27 Posts

July 2nd, 2014 11:00

Okay, I will install a Linux OS to the hard drive. This was my first time installing a hard drive so I wanted to make sure I didn't miss any steps. Thank you for helping me out.

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