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    Toshiba Equium A100-147

    Discussion in 'Hardware Components and Aftermarket Upgrades' started by TonyF, Jul 2, 2009.

  1. TonyF

    TonyF Newbie

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    This 2+ year old laptop came with a SATA 60GB 2.5" drive. It's now nearly full.

    So this week I acquired a new 160GB SATA 2.5" drive from span.com , put into a USB 2.0 / SATA external caddy, and used Acronis TrueImage to clone the old drive to it.

    Worked fine.

    Next carefully swopped the drives over - no problem, very easy operatio.

    But on boot-up the laptop will not read or access the new drive: after the usual power on self test and on-screen graphics, all I can see is a cursor blinking in the top l-h corner.

    Can someone please suggest what to do next?

    In the F2 BIOS set up options, the HDD parameters are not customisable; is there no way to upgrade the disk to a bigger one after all because of that hard-coding in the BIOS, maybe?

    Or could the problem be that the old HDD is a 5400 rpm model and the new one is a 7200 rpm one?

    The good news is the old drive still works OK.

    Thanks in advance
     
  2. namaiki

    namaiki "basically rocks" Super Moderator

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    You could try boot into the Windows Vista setup DVD and choose the repair option; I believe it also work for an XP installation.
     
  3. moral hazard

    moral hazard Notebook Nobel Laureate

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    I think you may need a new MBR for that drive.

    you can use a linux live cd to put a new MBR onto the new HDD.