R32 Hard drive upgrade woes

[lparsons]

Hello
I bought a new 80gb 5400rpm hard drive for my thinkpad R32, model 2658-A7U. It originally had a 30gb drive. I first bought a toshiba 80gb, and it was not recognized in the bios. I suspected maybe the system required a hitachi drive, so I purchased a hitachi from another retailer (for about 1/3 the cost of the same drive through IBM).

The hitachi drive also does not seem to be recognized. The behavior with the hitachi drive is the same as it was with the toshiba drive:
When I turn the system on, the hd access light comes on and stays on continually
At the same time, the dvd drive is inaccessible. No response from the eject button
In the boot menu, the hard drive does not have a plus by it (in the bios)
I tried booting with the new hard drive in and the dvd removed. No difference

What gives? I really don't have an extra $300 laying around to buy the hitachi drive from ibm. For that matter, tech support even suggested that the R32 might not support an 80gb drive - even though they sell one for it!

I did see one post that suggested the drive needs to be formatted before placing it in the system. Is this the problem? If so, what format does it need to be? I plan on dual booting (and currently am on my crowded 30gb drive). Do I just need one bootable partition on it in order to be recognized? (that doesn't make sense to me why I would need that for the bios to recognize the drive!)

Thank you

[lparsons]

I thought I would point out the semi-ambgiuous web sites...
The site for my particular model:
http://www5.pc.ibm.com/us/products.nsf/ ... p/_2658A7U

The site for upgrades for it:
http://www5.pc.ibm.com/us/products.nsf/ ... source=CCE

Which leads to this site for an 80gb drive:
http://www-131.ibm.com/webapp/wcs/store ... lCurrId=73

Which as the tech pointed out does not list the R32.

Any ideas on what is going on would be great...

The thread I am referring to that mentions the need to format a drive first is here:
http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=15480

[lparsons]

Much to my surprise, indeed the hard drive does need to be partitioned before the system will acknowledge it in the bios. Likely the dumbest thing I have ever heard, but it is true.

I put my new hard drive in a USB case, and hooked it up to a different system that recognized it ok. I then put an NTFS partition on it, since I wanted to dual boot it. NTFS partition size < hard drive size in this case.

After doing that, the drive was miraculously recognized in the bios! Go figure. I was then able to install my OSes (and even repartition in the process) and everything was peachy.

Apologies to all those who I doubted after having told me this. I guess I shouldn't hold it past IBM to try to pull something stupid like this on us.