Precision 370 not recognizing SATA drive

Question

Bought a 370 last year, and it looks like the OEM SATA drive died (ran Dell drive diagnostics with serious failures). Ok, so I no longer have a drive, just went out bought a new WD Raptor SATA drive and am prepared to reload everything.   Well, started the boot process from my XP CD but it cannot find the new drive. The Dell System partiion utilities recognize it correctly with the type and model/serial number.   At this point I am stuck as to why it won't recognize the drive so I can continue with my life and reload the OS.   Anyone who can point me in the right direction? Have I missed something?

tphillips63 · Answer

From the Dell OEM CD that came with it or a later version or is it a different XP install disk? If it is not the one that came with it you need the SATA drivers on a floppy and you press F6 to install other drivers during installation.

sschaefer · Answer

No from another CD, Dell did not ship the Recovery / Drive CD so I am limited to using my original XP distro CD.   Should I use the WD drivers or the SATA drivers from Dell (if they are avail?)

tphillips63 · Answer

Is the ZCD you have labled Operating Sytem, Already Installed on you system, reinstallation CD, MS Windows, SP 2, Dell? In any case you need to go the the downloads section and get the driver from Dell, WD does not provide the driver you need.

sschaefer · Answer

Thanks for the help, I found the driver (it only took 3 times to find the right one on boot up...) and am installing XP.   Now I get to see if I can resurrect the data from the old drive. I have a DVD data back up taken 15 days prior to the failure.

tphillips63 · Answer

Which driver did you use that worked? I always go through these hoops on Dells if I do not have the OEM CD to reinstall.

Storage, Drives & Media

Precision 370 not recognizing SATA drive

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