Replaced a hard drive - how do I get it working again?

Hello all,

I have a Dell Latitude C610 whose hard drive died a while ago. I am not the original buyer - I got it from a friend. I carefully removed the dead hard drive and connected it to another laptop and retrieved most of the files I needed from it.

Then recently I bought a hard drive on ebay that was for the same system. I replaced it into the hard drive tray, and replaced the tray into the laptop. The laptop now starts up, but it says something like "No boot drive" and allows me to press F1 for retry or F2 to enter the utility.

The hard drive should be more or less the same as the one that was faulty. Apart from getting a similar hard drive, what steps do I need to take to get this laptop working again?

 

You will need to format and install and operating system. I'd say the previous owner wiped the drive.

 

I'm confused as far as whether or not the hard drive you bought of eBay is broken, or if you are planning on using it.

If it's busted, you'll obviously need a new disk drive. If it works, you'll just have to put a new OS on it and restore your backed up files.