I am replaceing a WD 40 gig I think is bad with a used but working WD 80 gig. The drive has been wiped clean. It will not be detected, nor does it appear in the bios, "UNKNOWN DEVICE" for "0" and "off" for"1". "HARD DRIVE NOT DETECTED" on a black screen during start up. How do I get it to work, so I can attempt a reload?

Originally posted by nownthen:

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Older computers used to have a limit on the size of hard drive you could install in them. This was later fixed by updating the bios as it became more common to have larger hard drives. I'm not sure if your computer would be effected though.

Check out the Western Digital website they might have some software that is DOS based that you can use to facilitate the installation.

WD Support EIDE drive is not recognized or detected by the system BIOS Link

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Before you wrote this I already fixed my issue. To recap, #2 did not detect the hdd. To solve the issue I simply used my primary tower to load the OS onto one of the empty hdds. Once loaded I installed it in #2 and the bios DID detect the hdd and the other EMPTY hdds as well. #1 DID detect the hdd but would not allow the OS to be loaded. I used #2 to write a second hdd, installed it in #1. Both now detect, empty, written hdds, and allow the OS to be written to empty hdds as it should. Why this solution worked I have no idea. Why the issue existed in the first place I have no idea. Only the results count. Despite what WD says on its web site, most of which I do not understand, these towers do not care what position the jumper is in and which connector is used. Wierd as that sounds. I used CABLE SELECT as the drives came. Issue solved for reasons I do not know nor care except for the sake of knowing.