Trouble with New HDD

[Turkman]

Hello there. I've had this ol' laptop of mine for roughly two years, and its hard drive decided that it wanted to die, so I went ahead and bought myself a new one.

Alas, when I try to install Windows, the setup utility can't detect my HDD. I didn't have any trouble manually installing the thing, and it didn't come with any CDs or manuals, so I'm a bit lost now.

Here's what I've got:

HP Pavilion zv5230us
512 MB RAM

With a new:

Toshiba MK6034GAX Hard Disk Drive
60 GB capacity
ATA-6 interface
5400 RPM

Trying to install Windows XP Home Edition SP1.

Everything goes smoothly when the computer is first booting; the CD happily unloads its files and then asks me if I would like to install, repair, or exit setup. Many times now I have asked for it to install Windows, but it then told me that it could not detect my HDD, and that I should check to make sure everything is installed and connected and whatnot.

Now clearly, the problem could very well just be that the thing has been installed improperly, but I'm rather certain that I've put it in right, so I was wondering what input you fellows might have as to why the bloody thing isn't working.

(Also, as far as I'm aware, the hard drive is spinning up; I can't be sure because my laptop makes lots of noise and the HDD bay is right next to the CD drive, but I'm pretty sure I'm hearing something other than the CD's spinning.)

[Dead_reckon]

the bay is next to the cd drive? doesnt vibration kill hard drives? i mean, when my CPU fan blades somehow came off a while back the vibration caused my system to become extremly unstable, the fan has been replaced though...

[Turkman]

Yeah, the location of the CD drive and HDD bay may be a design flaw. Not really sure--I know very little about these kinds of things.

But now, check this out. While checking to make sure my old (and actually not-quite-dead-yet) HDD would still work, I noticed that the electrical things (for lack of a better term) that stick out of my old HDD and connect to the electrical things in my HDD bay fit very nicely and seem to enjoy each other's company. However, my new Toshiba HDD's electrical things are more exposed-looking, and there are more of them, including a set of four that can't connect to anything at all.

Now, logic would indicate that something is wrong here and I'd probably need to get another HDD. But what? I did the best checking I could to make sure that my new one would be compatible with my laptop. Why are these electrical things like this? What else could I do?

[GX1_Man]

I would check with HP that this drive is compatible before proceeding. Is the drive seen correctly in the BIOS? If not, then it is either not connected properly or it is incompatible.

[Turkman]

I went ahead and went into my BIOS and checked, but the HDD is not recognized there either, suggesting the conclusions you mentioned.

However, I already talked to HP, before I even bought this HDD, and they told me that as long as it was 2.5" HDD with 4200 or 5400 RPM, I wouldn't have any problems. I specifically asked about fitting, but they said that all laptop drives would work. They even gave me a link to a third-party site listing a bunch of HDDs. I ultimately ended up buying my HDD from Newegg, which listed my new one in the same page as the Travelstar model that was originally in my computer. I'd checked the specifications of this Toshiba model and everything was fine.

But as I mentioned in my last post, it doesn't look like the electrical things that connect the HDD to the bay are compatible; so how am I supposed to find out what these things look like for the next HDD that I get? Is there some statistic somewhere that says "this drive has 70 electrical connecting things" so that I can make sure it fits? Did Newegg possibly mis-label the drive that I bought?

And is there possibly any way to make it fit so that I don't have to bother with all of this?

[GX1_Man]

Here is the little bit Toshiba has to say about the drive:

http://www3.toshiba.co.jp/storage/english/spec/hdd/mk6034gax.htm

Maybe this will help:

http://www.alanmacek.com/ref/harddrive.shtml

Is there a connector that is reusable somehow that interfaces the drive to the cable? Don't break anything or just pull, but look carefully. Are you able to post some photos?

[Turkman]

Bah. All right, it turns out that there's a little adapter-thing for the pins that was on my old HDD that I needed to take off and put on my new one. Such a simple mistake could probably have been corrected by putting the user manual with the HDD, but sometimes we just aren't so lucky.

Thanks for helping out though, Dead Reckon and GX1. Through talking it out I was able to figure out exactly what was going on. And now to format! Squee!

[GX1_Man]

I'm glad you got it figured out and thanks for posting back. Let us know about your final success as well, OK?  

[Dead_reckon]

Bah. All right, it turns out that there's a little adapter-thing for the pins that was on my old HDD that I needed to take off and put on my new one. Such a simple mistake could probably have been corrected by putting the user manual with the HDD, but sometimes we just aren't so lucky.

Thanks for helping out though, Dead Reckon and GX1. Through talking it out I was able to figure out exactly what was going on. And now to format! Squee!

i was consideriing that, my school lappy once didnt regonize the hard drive, i didnt feel like waiting 2 weeks for another, so i pulled it out, noticed the adapter, put the hard drive back in, and it regonized it...