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    Please help me :)

    Discussion in 'Hardware Components and Aftermarket Upgrades' started by chevymandan, Aug 10, 2009.

  1. chevymandan

    chevymandan Newbie

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    hello, i have a dell Inspiron 9400 laptop, The hard drive cratered, so i bought a new one to install, ( the old HD was a Seagate 120G SATA) and the new one i bought is a Western digital 250G, I understand how to remove the old hard drive, and how to plug in/screw in the new hard drive, Im looking for some help on how to get the computer to recognize that theres a new HD. I havent powered it up since installing my new hard drive. some advice would be greatly appreciated...
     
    chevymandan, Aug 10, 2009
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  2. crazycanuk

    crazycanuk Notebook Virtuoso

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    your computer should automatically recognize the drive, pop in your restore dvd or a fresh copy of an OS and your well on your way
     
    crazycanuk, Aug 10, 2009
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  3. chevymandan

    chevymandan Newbie

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    I did that now it says no boot sector on internal hard drive?
     
    chevymandan, Aug 10, 2009
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  4. goofball

    goofball Notebook Deity

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    did you try to boot from the optical? if not, press F12 on the Dell bootup screen and select your optical drive (ensure you have the restore CD inside first)
     
    goofball, Aug 10, 2009
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  5. TwiztidKidd

    TwiztidKidd Notebook Evangelist

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    First enter BIOS SETUP and confirm the harddrive is visible. If not then it's not installed correctly or not supported.

    I assume new harddrive does not have an operating system installed, meaning it does not have the necessary SATA drivers needed. They're drivers needed for the SATA harddrive controller chip from the mainboard and they're not specific to the harddrive manufacturer. Anyhow everything is missing. So either you start a fresh install of your OS, you could tell us which OS are planning to install as there are different steps for each one, or you could purchase an external HDD enclosure (USB/AC Powered/Or Not) to fit your harddrive and they'll both become visible if you boot up from your old harddrive. Besides you probably still want to access the old one to use it as backup,extra storage,etc.
     
    TwiztidKidd, Aug 11, 2009
    #5