Help needed - restore and new HDD formatting

Hi again,

Hopefully the photo uploaded OK.

I managed to get into the BIOS and tried every configuration there to change RAID to SATA/ATI/AHCI but unfortunately still no HDD visible - although I did notice that when I switched to AHCI there was an audible clunk from the drive bay...not sure if that's a good or bad sign!

I don't expect there to be a fault due to damage as the new drive arrived well packed, in an anti-static wrap and from a leading UK retailer of Seagate gear. I've handled it appropriately since I've had it.

jphughan was quite right about the laptop being shipped with RAID set by default. I didn't know that until now. Thank you.

I'm happy to try the floppy version of the Intel Rapid Storage driver even though I don't expect to use RAID, if it solves the issue.

I can also try running the new hard drive in a USB docking but, if that would work, simply as a means to eliminate mechanical issues with the drive bay. Forgive my ignorance, but I presume that Windows installer doesn't care where the hard drive is physically located providing it's there and operational...or am I completely wrong about that? It would be a last resort if a fault in the drive bay is the only logical reason for continued issues.

R.

Hi again,

I'm extremely grateful for your patience and continued help with this.

Yes, I've been working on re-establishing Win 7 (just a personal preference...I have Win 10 on my "rescue" laptop, even with Classic Shell installed and I still hate it!! - although I accept your sound advice that it's better to go with Win 10 for various reasons....and I'm considerably closer to abandoning Win 7 after this latest challenge!)

I have followed your logical suggestions...System Information shows no HDD (photo attached).

I've also attached photos of the Boot Sequence and SATA page.

Just for the sake of completion, before I throw in the towel and accept it must be a problem with the drive bay itself, I followed your helpful guidance on Shift F10 from Windows Setup, and with Diskpart then List Disk, the final photo shows that only the attached USB flash drive (14Gb) is being seen.

Before I consign the laptop to the scrap-heap, I'll try removing the shaped piece of plastic which Dell supply to ease insertion and retrieval of the HDD, in case this is preventing connection.  I'll also get a pair of calipers and measure that the new 2.5" drive is exactly the same size as the old one..as there is a bit of "play" when inserting these drives....although physically pushing the new HDD in as far as it will go whilst looking at the BIOS / Diskpart settings has made no difference.

Thanks also for your advice on the USB 3.0 side of things with this model of kit and my docking hub. I'd better not venture anywhere with that!

...but at present, it looks like a hardware issue in the drive bay or the new 1Tb drive itself.

R.

Here's the BIOS System Info (photo) with the old (failed) HDD installed and this is being read....so it seems to point convincingly to a hardware fault with the new 1Tb Seagate Barracuda SATA drive or the drive bay

jphughan & nyc10036

Good morning, many thanks for guiding me through this.

I'll try the foam padding and the docking bay and that's about it other than returning the drive to the seller for a refund. I have learned so much from you both.

I dare say I'll become a Win10 convert sooner than I was planning!

Take care and all the best.

R.

@jphughan 

(finally spotted the @ symbol to link to you!!)

The foam packer did the trick!!!

I would never have thought of trying that...thank you so very, very much.

I've attached photos, hopefully they get past the moderators quickly so that everyone can see the solution.

Foam Packer on 2.5" Seagate driveSOLVED!! HDD now visible

The BIOS is showing the new 1Tb drive in all its glory!

Wherever you are in the world, I hope the sun is shining for you today.

The install will hopefully now be a breeze, I'll be diligently following your guidance and that from @nyc10036 .

Best wishes,

R.

@Randolfus  fantastic!  I almost didn't bother mentioning that foam thing, and even when I did it was more as general information about the fact that some hard drives have different thicknesses -- which I only mentioned after you talked about using a caliper to measure yours -- and not something that I thought was likely to be a solution.  But I'm glad it worked out!

By the way, if you stuck with Windows 7 and you haven't already done this, you can save yourself a bunch of time on your setup by using the Windows 7 Convenience Update as explained here.  You won't get it through Windows Update directly, but the method explained in that guide will allow you to download and install one massive update that will include several years' worth of updates in one large bundle.  You'll still have several MORE after that these days, which will likely need to be installed across multiple restarts, but the Convenience Update will still get you much closer to current much more quickly than using Windows Update the regular way, which would involve downloading every single update individually and therefore require even more time and restarts.  In fact the Windows Update catalog for Windows 7 is now so large that Windows Update can now sit sometimes for literally hours just trying to figure out which updates it needs to download, before it actually downloads anything!

@Randolfus  glad my suggestion was timely!   For drivers, just go to support.dell.com and search your model name -- not your Service Tag -- and click over to the Downloads section, then select your OS.  You'll likely only need Ethernet or WiFi drivers, because after that you should be able to install Dell Update and have it grab everything else.  The reason I caution against using the Service Tag is because the site tries to filter its drivers list down to include only drivers for the hardware that was shipped in that particular system.  That can be convenient, but sometimes it filters out drivers that actually apply.  But again, if you turn out to be able to use Dell Update after you get a driver that allows you onto the Internet, you likely won't have to worry about the rest of the list anyway.

@jphughanPerfect timing!

I've just completed the install and was working off my rescue laptop to start hunting for drivers (starting with stuff to get the ethernet and wi-fi controllers working) when I noticed your new message about the convenience pack....what a time-saver that will be....I'd never heard of this....I'm indebted to you again.

By coincidence, I was mailed today by a review site on behalf of the company which sold me the new Seagate drive, so I'm going to mention the difference in thickness of the old and new hard drives and the grief it has caused and your brilliant foam-fix!

Maybe you should ® register the patent and ™trademark it !!

Cheers,

R.

@Randolfus 

That is excellent news.

All the SSDs, Crucial, PNY, Samsung that I have purchased are the 7mm thickness.

If there is a "sag", I place two strips of thick-ish double-sided tape on the SSD to make it the same thickness as the original hard drive.

The PNY SSDs I bought came with a foam spacer which is nice.

.

@nyc10036 That's interesting and useful to know, thank you. Clearly PNY are aware of this headache. I've managed to get the screws to locate in all four holes now, with the foam packer still in there and with just a little tweak. I'm going to trim the foam flush with the drive and refit the plastic cover and put some tape over it just to be sure it can't all move about when carrying the laptop around.
Thanks again for your advice. Have a great day
R.

@jphughanHi, thanks for the tip on locating drivers. I'm going with a hardwire ethernet connection (only one driver to worry about). Managed to get an ID on the controller but the recommended driver wouldn't play ball, so I had no option but to put the service tag in and then take just the Network driver it offered. I'd actually missed a step...I actually had the driver from the Dell list without using the service tag, my mistake was that when back in Device Manager, I expected "update driver" to search and execute the correct driver. I realise now (that it's working and I'm online downloading all drivers) that I should have run the driver myself as it's an .exe file.

I couldn't see an easy way around having SupportAssist do the track and trace for new drivers, but I can remove it afterwards if it's too hungry.

I'll be getting the updates convenience pack straight after that...thanks again for mentioning that, much appreciated.

Have a great day,

R.

@Randolfus  glad you're on your way to a working system.   Yes, Device Manager will only look for "raw" driver packages, i.e. a folder containing the necessary files such as (usually) INF, CAT, and SYS files -- and possibly quite a few more depending on the device in question.  Dell's driver packages for reasonably recent systems are designed so that when you launch them, you have the chose to either run them or extract their contents to a folder without running.  For MOST driver packages, the latter option gives you a "raw" driver package, which is a handy capability especially for enterprises that might need to inject them into image files for mass deployment rather than just launch them on the specific system they're using -- but sometimes even the extracted version is just another installer file that can't be used quite that way, at least not without figuring out how to break open THAT installer, which typically comes from the component vendor (Intel, Broadcom, etc.).

The only way to get drivers individually on support.dell.com is to go through the list and know what you need and what you can skip.  It's a bit tedious, and the most recent redesign of the Dell Support page arguably made it harder to find what you want and skip what you don't, but I've done it.  The drivers used to be grouped into collapsible category headings rather than just lumped together in one huge list.  Of course you can sort by category, but you still need to scroll past a bunch of stuff you might not care about.  And the default method of sorting by date means that you could potentially see multiple revisions of a driver for a particular component before finding the most recent driver of another component that hadn't received an update for a while -- which means you never know quite how far back you need to go.  The search at the top helps if you know exactly what you need or you're missing, but that isn't always the case.  Still, I'm sure Dell would say, "Well that's why we provide Dell Update/SupportAssist."

@jphughan 

Good morning,

Just thought I’d let you know that I’m well over half way to being back up and running. I used your guidance to create a checklist of important steps so as not to overlook something. Drivers are all loaded and working fine. Just a couple of updates that I need to fix via  net stop wuauserv and then reversal of the same.

I’ve got to find a way to access the Product Key for my Dell factory installed MS Office Business 2010 package. Worst case scenario, I have my original invoice/order confirmation and I have read elsewhere that Microsoft will accept this as proof of license purchase, but I was hoping to try resources at my immediate disposal first to hunt for the key.

I’ve read elsewhere that the key can be accessed in various places:

1. Original Dell Order Confirmation/Invoice – Not showing!
2. System restore back-up disks – Yes, I have the 3 disks with 3 Factory#1/2/3.swm files respectively…but I have no idea whether commercially available programs will look inside these or even interrogate peripheral drives, DVD etc.
3. Searching for registry entries with TOKEN files – I managed to harvest as many files as I could from the failed HDD but sadly no sign of “TOKEN” when doing a basic file /folder content search.

Could I trouble you by asking whether you are aware of anything obvious I have missed? I realise I’ve taken up quite a bit of your time already and don’t wish to outstay my welcome, so if your advice is to launch a new post under Software I’m happy with that.

I’m not totally stuck for an Office package, I’ve still got MS Office Pro 2000 disks!!

And there’s always open source like LibreOffice which I’ve used before on a “home-rebuilt” Ubuntu Dell Tower PC.

Thanks again for your superb help.

R.