New Hard Drive Not Recognized in BIOS

Hello! I've been scouring the internet for advice on this problem for several hours now, and I'm hoping that someone here might be able to lend a hand.

I have a HP Pavilion dv2700, which is about 2 years old. It's original hard drive recently died, so I ordered a new one. The original was a Toshiba 250GB, 5400RPM and the new one is Hitachi 500GB, 7200RPM. Both are 2.5" SATA drives. I was under the impression that the installation would be as simple as unscrewing the HDD panel, popping the old drive out and putting the new one in. Of course, it wasn't.

My goal was to install Ubuntu on the new HDD, so I booted from my Ubuntu disc and started the installation process. When it came time to partition the hard drive, there was no drive listed. So, I restarted and checked the BIOS and it's not showing up there either. Most articles I've read on this subject say to go into the hard drive settings in the BIOS, but this particular version of Phoenix BIOS doesn't seem to have those settings. I considered updating my BIOS, but it looks like HP only offers updates for Vista.


This thread is the closest thing I could find to what I'm experiencing. This user found out that he had forgotten to replace an adapter from his old hard drive, but I compared the old and new drives, and they look practically the same. Maybe I'm missing something simple (actually, I'd love that).

Other than that, the drive spins at start up, the indicator lights blink, but the computer just isn't recognizing it. I'm unbelievably frustrated at this point, and I'm running out of new options to try, so any ideas would be welcome. I hate to think that this brand-new drive is irreparably damaged.

Thanks in advance for any advice.

 

If it is powering up and spinning, I think you may need to connect it to a live system to 'initialize' the disk first.

Or, just start the installation of Windows (any version) and once the HD is formatted, just cancel the rest of the install and hopefully Ubuntu will now see the drive.

Good luck.

 

As mentioned, be sure it is spinning up. It is possible either the drive is DOA or the laptop just can not power it up.

You may find if it spins up properly that the drive has t be jumpered for SATA I. Wile the drivve should be backwards compatible the chipset may not like SATA II implimentation. This could also be a bios issue as you are suspecting too..............

 

Unfortunately, I don't have any Windows installation disks. Since my laptop is a HP, it didn't come with any disks, just a recovery partition on my old hard drive.

I followed Hitachi's directions for formatting a new drive in Ubuntu (using the live CD), but it just kept saying that there was no such drive. Of course, now that I think about it, I might not be able to do that with the live CD version.

 

You can dl the Windows 7 installer from here Windows 7 ISO Image from Microsoft to create a dvd or usb installer.

 

Okay, well. Turns out that the drive isn't actually spinning. What I thought was the hard drive was actually my uber-noisy optical drive, and the indicator lights are flashing because of the optical drive as well.

I reseated the drive, checked to make sure that everything was as it should be. I placed it in there the exact same way the old drive was, so I guess that there's a larger problem with either my computer or the drive. I wish I had access to another laptop, so I could check and see if the drive works in there, but I don't.

 

Oh wow... DOA?

Easy enough to RMA/return then?

Good luck.

 

Why I cannot open the link here? What's the problem?

 

That link is a direct download to an 3GB ISO file.

If your browser doesn't allow 'pop ups' then you can't get the ISO file.

Try another browser?

Good luck.