Vaio FZ21E SATA Drive

Trying to install a replacement SATA HDD.

I have damaged the hard drive on the FZ21E (my fault, too heavy handed)and Sony recommended a replacement. Easy they said - do it yourself.

So, bought an identical Hitachi drive (HTS541616J9SA00) The HDD is an Hitachi SATA 5400 Travelstar 160GB. The original OS on my HDD was Vista Home premium (pre-installated, no disk). I have tried to install XP Pro onto the new drive and it doesn't see it. However, the BIOS does see a 160GB HDD albeit that there are no other HDD details in the BIOS.

Can anyone please help. I wish to avoid Vista if possible but without a notebook am willing to try anything.

Cheers,

Terry

 

Find the search box at the very top of each page here. This question has been answered in multiple threads here on MANY occasions. Bottom line you may get XP to run but you will NEVER get function keys to work or have any sort of power management. This has driven several folks who tried XP to go back to Vista.

Gary

BTW you can get restore disks, which you should have burned when you first got the machine, directly from Sony, for about $15 if I remember correctly.

 

Terry, help us to try and help you; though there is no guarantee of a fix.

Need clarification :

a) You installed the new HDD then did your XP Pro installation from the optical drive; OR, did you install the OS onto your new HDD using another PC ?

b) What do you mean "it doesn't see it" ? Error message ? If yes, what exactly does the message say ? If not, then please explain.


rgds.

 

Benjamin Chin,

What terryb is talking about is a well documented issue with the XP installer CD. It can't see the SATA drive. It requires a SATA driver to be loaded at install time. Trouble is the XP installer will ONLY allow you to use a floppy to give it the driver (unlike the Vista installer which allows for CD, or memory sticks to supply the driver). An FZ machine has no floppy drive. So you must resort to slipstreaming the driver into the installer. A lot of hassle to go through, when in the end there will be no function keys or power management no matter what hoops you jump through.

Gary

 

That clarifies. Thanks.


rgds.

 

Thanks

New (blank) HDD installed into the Vaio. Run my XP pro cd and I get to the stage where XP asks if I want to install additional drivers. Eventually end up with a message saying Disk (HDD) not found. Having read a little more I agree; will install Vista. Intend to get a Vista ISO download and use the serial from the bottom of the Vaio. Is this likely to work?

 

Yes, see my signature line below for a link to instructions on an FZ clean install. There are some specific differences with the FZ21 versus the FZ190 I used to create the document. But there are some links in the first message of the thread to point you to other messages in the thread detailing the differences. The first issue you are going to run into though is that the process assumes you are starting with a machine in its original state. Some of the steps create a CD to be used latter (the one for the SATA driver). You can ignore that and install the Intel SATA driver after the fact. The stock Vista SATA driver will suffice for getting installed. The other issue is that the procedure uses the backup DVD set that Sony has you make when you first get the machine. Did you make that set of two DVD's???

Gary

 

Downloading vista from torrents is illegal.

Only way to install vista again in the new HDD is to request sony to send recovery dvd. You can also get a windows anytime upgrade dvd to do a clean install of vista. But this option is available only in the U.S.
You can also get retail copy of vista from someone to install and use the product key from the bottom of your laptop.

 

MSDN has ISO's of Vista as well, so I didn't automatically assume he was using a torrent. Although more than likely you are correct. As you said he can borrow a copy from a friend and use his own key without violating any laws.

Gary

 

No I didn't make a back-up DVD. However, I have a friend with an identical machine. Could I use his back-up copy? Would it work?

Cheers,

Terry

 

Please refer to this link -> http://news.softpedia.com/news/Install-Windows-XP-On-SATA-Without-a-Floppy-F6-47807.shtml

That's how I've installed win XP on my FZ21E.

 

Yes you can as long as it is the same model. This set of restore DVD's is made from the Recovery Partition and is usually used to restore the machine back to its out of the box state. But for a clean install it is also used to recover some specific applications needed for the machine to operate correctly.

Gary