Brand New Harddrive not being recognized in BIOS.

Surrender · 06 Jul 2013

Hello.

My HP Pavillion dv6000 laptop failed on me last summer, well.. the HDD failed, I was unable to access the computer at all, black screen saying failure.

Anyways, I want to use my laptop again so I purchased a brand new Western Digital Blue HDD 320GB from Tigerdirect this afternoon.
I got home, took out the old one, popped the new one in expecting everything to go smoothly.

I plugged in my USB to install Windows 7 on, I get to the page where you choose the partition to install Windows 7 and to come to my surprise, there was nothing there. Instantly my heart fell, I'm like you've gotta be kidding me.. Drove an hour and a half through busy humid traffic to get this...?

I checked the BIOS and it doesn't appear to be there.. I looked at HP's website and I can't find any new BIOS updates.. I'm trying to use "Mini-Tool Partition Wizard" but it's giving me some stupid error saying "ERROR: This bootable CD does not support Windows Server." I have no clue what that means... I've already tried reburning it a few times. I'm ****ing frustrated.

I don't know what to do..

bobafetthotmail · 07 Jul 2013

Can you try the hard disk on another PC? desktops can use them as well. You can connect it without rebooting too. First data cable then power cable.

Also check that the BIOS didn't disable sata (some do have the option of disabling the SATA controller and/or sata port, some don't, look in the page about hard drive info and try to change the "not installed" field if possible).

For a bootable partition manager I use a trusty linux USB drive, the tools are all packed in PartedMagic bootable disk.

strollin · 07 Jul 2013

I would do as bobafetthotmail suggested and hook the drive to another machine to verify whether the drive is good or not. How sure are you that the failure of your laptop was due to the hdd vs the SATA controller on the motherboard?

Certain models of the HP Pavillion dv6000 laptop that have an Nvidia gpu have a known problem whereas the gpu overheats to a point that it actually loosens itself from the mobo and causes a myriad of problems. You may have gotten bit by this issue.