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New WD Scorpio Hard Drive Question

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PAUL161

PAUL161

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Just bought a WD 500 gig hard drive to replace the 350 gig in my Tosheba lap top. When I installed it, seems like the computer doesn't recognize it. Any help would be appreciated. I replaced the old drive to be able to use the computer. I've even put a windows install disk in the CD, but same reading. Any help? PJ

I forgot to mention that I also have a USB external case for it and when installed in it, the computer recognizes it as a storage device plugged in, but won't access it to download files.
 
Did you try going into the BIOS and telling it to detect the drive?

What happened when you tried to boot the Windoze install CD ? If it didn't try to boot from it, you may have to enable it as a boot device (also in the BIOS). I normally leave them disabled, since that used to be a common way for viruses to spread (on the boot sector of CDs).
 
PAUL161 said:
Just bought a WD 500 gig hard drive to replace the 350 gig in my Tosheba lap top. When I installed it, seems like the computer doesn't recognize it. Any help would be appreciated.
Click to expand...

Hi Paul,
When you install a new hard drive it should be blank. That means there is no operating system to boot up and the drive isn't formatted. Does the old drive work at all? If it does and is virus free, you can clone the old drive to the new without having to install windows again. Also if you clone, you won't need to format the new drive as that will be transferred too. If you want to do a clean install, you'll probably need to set the DVD drive as the first boot device in the BIOS. Let us know how you want to proceed.
 
The BIOS is set as USB 1st, CD 2nd, then HD which I can change to CD in first position if that's what I need to do. Even though th old drive works ok I would like to do a clean install on the new drive. Another thing I don't understand is, when I put the new drive in the external USB case, it is recognized as a mass storage device, but does not show up in the list of drives and I can not access it. I thought if I could access it I could format it. I've done it that way on my desk top. How do I clone the new drive, if that's the only way to go? PJ
 
"The BIOS is set as USB 1st, CD 2nd, then HD". So you're saying you've set the BIOS boot order to start with USB first, CD 2nd, then HD, right?

And you're asking how to clone the old external HD onto the new external USB HD?

First, boot from a cloning disk in the CD/DVD slot. Don't boot from any of the HDs. I use CloneZilla, which is free; you download it and burn it to a CD. Boot from the CloneZilla CD; it will recognize all the attached drives, whether formatted or not. You then choose which drive to copy, and which drive to copy *to*. Takes about 30 minutes on my 30G HD.

If you've cloned *to* the external USB drive, you then restart the system, and let your BIOS choose the first boot drive (I assume you've set the external USB drive as your boot drive).

Voila!

Note that some Windows installations are "hard coded" to the HD they were first installed on. So you *may* get a boot message when Windows detects it's running from a new drive, and needs to be re-registered. Maybe.

Hope that helps.
Tom
 
Set boot disk priority to see the CD drive first? What Winblows version install disk are you using?

IF you can boot the original drive AND the O/S is XP with SP3 or newer, make the "system recovery" and backup disks. Then replace the drive and try to reinstall using those CDs.

Cloning the original would be better, IMO.
 
Thanks guys, now I have a better idea of what's going on. I agree Doc, even though I have legal Vista and W-7 install disks, probably cloning the old drive would be better. There's tons of info on the old drive that would take a week of spare time to transfer. I'll keep you posted. PJ
 
I downloaded HD Clone (free), burned it to a disk and it found the USB drive. It cloned my HD to the new HD with no problems. Thanks for the help! I downloaded CloneZilla and for some reason it didn't recognize the USB drive, reason for down loading HD Clone, it worked! PJ
 
Good news. You might want to go back into your BIOS and make your new hard drive the first boot device. That will shorten the boot up time a bit.
 
Well as I said, with the help of you guys, the new HD is working perfectly and the clone came out as it should have. I put the old drive, there's nothing wrong with it, just smaller, in the external USB case, formatted it, made two partitions on it and cloned this computer back on it in one partition. I'm going to clone the wifes laptop in the other partition. This way everything in each computer can be put back as it was when cloned. I update recovery on a stick every couple weeks, so I'm never too far from being up to date.
These new little USB cases for a laptop hard drive are really nice. No seperate power cord, just the USB cord, they weigh nothing and small enough to put in your pocket if needed. Nice! PJ
 
mehheh. :thumbsup:
 
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