Installing new Hard Drive on Inspiron 6400.Trouble getting CPU to recognize existance of new HD.

If the BIOS doesn't see the drive, did you remove the connector from the back of the original drive and place it over the connector (power and SATA) on the new one?

Some systems don't use adapters - this must be one of them.  If you have a desktop system, try connecting the drive to it (if the desktop uses SATA, the notebook drive will work -- the connector is the same).  If it works there, then it's likely the hard drive you had was OK, but the mainboard in the notebook is bad.  If the drive isn't recognized in a desktop either, it's probably DOA.

What happened to the original drive?

Original drive failed.  i can hear scratching when it is running.  I may be able to recover the data, however, but as for the XP registry, it is corrupted so i cannot run XP off of it.

WOuld the HDD password, which I am waiting for Dell to provide, do anything?  I need to get into the BIOS setup somehow to have it detect the new HD, but I cannot figure out how to do that.

Is it the hard drive password, or the BIOS password?

Grey/white screen:

"Hard -disk #XE407G09596-555B, the system Primary HDD, is protected by a password authentication system. You cannot access data on this hard drive without the correct password. please type in the hard-drive password and press

thanks.  we will see if that works.

You can order one:

http://support.dell.com/support/topics/global.aspx/support/dellcare/en/backupcd_form?c=us&cs=19&l=en&s=dhs&redirect=1 

I found this post that makes some sense:

Dell said that since my hardware warranty has expired, they would still do the "courtesy" of sending me the original disks that I had lost.  I told them I didn't lose those disks, but that they do not have what i need: namely the driver so that the bios would recognize the hard drive.  Interestingly enough, on the WDC support site, they say:

Resolution:
During the initial installation of Windows, you will need to press F6 almost immediately when "Setup is inspecting your hardware..." appears on the screen. You will then be asked to provide any mass storage controller drivers you may have. At this point, use the drivers supplied by your controller manufacturer (or motherboard manufacturer). After performing the steps above, the drive will be recognized and the install should continue without problems.

Note: In many cases, specialized ATA or RAID ports, SCSI ports, and SATA ports integrated directly into the motherboard must have their drivers installed as shown above.

Yet, the motherboard manufacturer, or BIOS manufacturer are bothe inhouse DELL stuff... and when I try to install XP, and hit "F6" to provide the mass storage controller driver... it says to insert the "device support disk from a mass storage device manufacturer." 

So WDC says get it from Dell.... Dell (or the computer) says get it from WDC.

Has anyone replaced a hard drive on the Dell Inspiron 6400?  I can't believe i'm the only one with this issue.

Hey dc,

Unfortunately, this is more of a "misery loves company" reply than anything else.  I'm hoping that you've found an answer and I can steal it from you.  Yes????  Please????  I give a description of the simple things I've tried in case it gives anyone other ideas on what might be helpful.

I bought the 250GB Seagate Momentus 5400.4 to replace the Hitachi (I'm lucky..still works...just getting full).  I used Acronis True Image to copy Hitachi to Seagate, swapped drives and then had what appears to be a similar experience as yours.

First, I just let it boot and got the Blue Screen telling me to remove any new Harddrive or harddrive controllers that were just installed.  So then I rebooted, F2 into BIOS.

Why doesn't the BIOS allow any changes?  My 2003 XPS2 allows me to set SATA interfaces to OFF or AUTO and then it just recognizes the disk.  So I get out of BIOS and I try to boot to SAFE mode (forgot that is irrelevant unless it can get to a working copy of the OS).  Booting from my original XP CD did me no good either.

I put the Momentus into my XPS and it shows up with 0 bytes and RAW format (this is after I have cloned from the Hitachi).  So I go out and find the nifty program http://hddguru.com/content/en/software/2007.07.20-HDD-Capacity-Restore-Tool/.  This recovers the original size (after a power down and reboot) and all of the original data is there and useable.

So now I'm not sure whether I just don't have a bootable drive, or the 6400 doesn't recognize it.  After another try on the 6400 (and finding it revert back to 0bytes and RAW), I decided it must be a driver issue (then I learn that technology has advanced and SATA harddrives don't need drivers...as long as the controllers are able to communicate with them).  

I then updated the BIOS and the Chipset Drivers from Dell (I don't normally do this for optional drivers...usually begging for problems) again...no help.  Also downloaded and installed updated MediaDirect since it made some reference to being able to access > 137GB drives.  As I expected, this didn't help either.

I used Belarc Advisor to confirm the SATA controller: Intel 82801GBM/GHM (ICH7-M) SATA Controller - 27C4

and went to the net to find that Intel doesn't provide these drivers anymore.  So I can't find anything to load during an F6 when it is booting from the XP CD.

The next thing I was going to try was to read up about "slipstreaming" a copy of XP SP2 with the appropriate drivers.  Problem is, I really don't want to start from scratch since my wife is using this computer with Adobe Photoelements and has all sorts of tags to photos that would be obliterated (She has 30GB of photos in 4 years).

Just as a plea to and Dell Moderators, isn't there anyone who can tell us how to get the controller drivers or "unlock" the BIOS (probably wouldn't help unless drivers are present).  May also try to find the controller in Device Manager and attempt an update on the net.

I've been a long time fan of Dell especially in the days of the 3 year warranty.  After selling me a desktop limited to 64MB RAM (a few years back, but I had to prove it to Dell Customer Service who then said "Wow.  That's too bad!!") and now this, I may be looking elsewhere in the future.

You cannot do a complete clone of your hard drive because of the Media Direct partition.

see

http://www.goodells.net/dellrestore/mediadirect.htm

I am currently in the process of installing Vista (upgrading from XP, at last)...

My issue was that my OEM hard drive failed. 

I bought a new WD 160 gb HD from Fry's.

6400 did not recognize the existance of the new hard drive when I installed it.

Dell Help and WD help were no help.

I finally figured out, with the help of this forum that: the supposedly new HD from WD was used or probably refurbished (despite the new packaging) and had a HD password on it.

I returned the HD and exchanged for a new one.

Also, using the Media Direct disc, i was able to partition the new HD.

Then I was able to install the OS.

So in summary, after getting a new HD, I needed to use the Media Direct disc to get the process started.

My thoughts for your old, full HD:  Get a Hard Disk enclosure, and use it to transfer the data from the old to the new (after you install the OS on the new HD).

HOpe this helps!

DC - glad you got yours up and running.

ejn63 - thanks for the link!  Well...there was a lot of things going on that I didn't even know about!  This looks promising.  Certainly seems a bit convoluted, but I'm glad someone figured this out (could you tell I was getting a bit frustrated?).

I'll give this a try.  I'll reinstall MediaDirect later if I ever think I'll use it (haven't yet).  Looks like I can leave off the DSR as well since I've got so many changes that going back to "Factory settings" would be more frustrating than a clean install.

I'll let you know what happens.