FIXED: new hard drive not recognized in bios

[myhalcyondaze]

I hope someone can help me. I bought a used T42 (2378-R4U) off of craigslist. Before purchasing, the seller demonstrated that it worked properly (could load into Windows). However, I didn't buy the hard drive from him. I bought a Seagate 100GB hard drive (ST980815A) from buy.com to use, but it isn't recognized in the bios. Could something have happened over the past couple weeks to cause this? Any suggestions other than a new motherboard? I've checked the jumper settings. For this drive, no jumper is master, so that shouldn't be it.

Thanks!

[sjthinkpader]

The new drive is not formatted. If you boot the computer with Windows XP distribution disk, did it report no drive?

[myhalcyondaze]

By distribution disk do you just mean a copy of Windows? I have a valid copy of XP SP2 and when I load it, it says no hard drives are found. I don't have the original T42 recovery disks. Do I need those? Should I try hooking the drive up as a slave to a working computer to try to format it? I haven't tried that because I don't have any other laptops or a 2.5" to 3.5" adapter, but I could get one if someone thinks it will help.

[smidgley]

The drive is either bad or you haven't installed it correctly if the bios can't see it. The drive doesn't need to be formatted for the bios or the Windows installation to see it.

The hard drive in a T42 installs upside down (the label down), in case you didn't know.

[myhalcyondaze]

FIXED. Yeah, it was the upside-down thing. I started to wonder why I didn't feel any resistance when installing the HD, so I tried installing it seemingly "upside-down" and the last 1/8" finally had some resistance. Then, I check on here and that's the suggestion! I verified that the HD now shows up in the bios and can be detected by the windows xp install CD.