PROBLEM with Hitachi 7K200 on HP DV2500T..HELP PLEASE!!

Ok, I bought the Hitachi 7K200 100-GB from zipzoomfly.com as a replacement to the seagate drive that came with my laptop (of course for the performance.) It it's an HP DV2500T that I ordered from HP in Sept, just a month and something ago.

The problem is that after I install the 7k200 physically, everything is ok physically but when I turn on my computer, it will not boot from the hard drive as the drive can not be recognized. I am sure that the drive is not a defect because this is actually the 2nd drive as the 1st one I THOUGHT initally its a defect since it wont detect. However with the replacement RMA, another brand new one the problem persists.

I tried contacting HP and Hitachi but got limited help thusfar. I wonder if anyone went through this problem and somehow fixed it? Because my bios is up to date, the HP rep said the motherboard DOES support the 7200RPM drive..but at this point I do not know what is the problem? Could it be a compatibility issue of any sort? Can anyone please help me out? THANKS IN ADVANCE.

 

Do you mean that the harddrive is unrecognizable during installation?

If that's the case and you're using some flavor XP, chances are it's a generic ATA/AHCI incompatibility. In which case you'll need either turn off the AHCI or slipstream SATA drivers onto your XP disk.

 

Does the BIOS recognise the HDD - it should show something like model number and size.

You won't be able to boot off the HDD until you have installed an operating system. Trying to boot off an empty HDD will cause an error message. I would expect this to be more like "operating system not found", but may be no bootable disk found. It's not that the HDD isn't there.

There are two ways to get the HDD up and running:

(i) Put it in an external enclosure and use software such as Acronis Migrate Easy to clone your old HDD onto the new one. This will make a complete copy of everything on your HDD and, once you have installed the cloned HDD, will boot up and be ready to run like your old one (but Vista may want to be reactivated).

(ii) Get out your operating system installation / recovery disk and install Windows. Then install all the patches and updates and all your other software.

John

 

First, I'm using Vista, not XP. and 2nd, the problem is the HD does not show up on the bios for some reason, it does not even say invalid or anything when i try to boot from it cus its not even recognized..when i try to install windows vista, and when i get to the part that says select drive/partition, it's not on there as it tells me to install drivers but hard drive drivers should be built in or such as it says on the hitachi site.

 

I know of no reason why the BIOS be unable to recognise the HDD.

If the BIOS is not seeing the HDD then either (i) the HDD is not connected properly or (ii) is dead. Can you see / hear any spin-up noises?

I would first check the connection (remove / replace). The second test would be to put the HDD into a suitable external enclosure. If there's no sign of life in the enclosure then it is dead.

John

 

have you checked the jumper on the drive. make sure its not in the slave setting?