I just replaced the IDE hard drive in a friends laptop. I changed the boot menu to CD to do an install and the system wont recognise the hard drive, telling me to press it in firmly and check the connection is secure before powering off and trying again. :? Any ideas on what to do next?
Download and burn the manufacturor's harddrive testing disk utility. Western Digital, Hitatchi, Maxtor, etc -- they've all got a utility that can boot from disk and scan/repair a bad harddrive. If your harddrive won't even show up in the manufacturor's disk, then you may want to check and make sure that no jumpers are out of place and that the harddrive is set to either Master or Cable Select (if one doesn't work, try the other). If you've gone through all of this and still can't get the harddrive to display, then you're looking at a very dead harddrive and I'd return it where you bought it if you've still got a warranty. Be sure to reply here so that others can learn from your experience.
Of course....no jumpers...so its set to Master. Before it gets into the boot menu It says " the drive in the modular bay cannot be identified. It may not be properly inserted or may have some other problem"
Well if it can't identify it, then I'm going to go with "Some other problem." Unless, you're somehow manager force it in upside-down, which often times isn't even possible. So craziness aside, it looks like you've got a dead harddrive on your hands. Sorry for your loss. I'd speak at the funueral, but honestly, I didn't know it that well.
