Does some hard drive will not reconized by Windows XP?

P

paulcheung

Active Member
Hi, I have upgraded my Gateway MX6214 laptop with a larger hard drive, the old drive is a fujishu 80GB SATA drive. the new harddrive is Western digital WD5000bevt 500GB hard drive. I notice the new drive have few more pins than the old drive in the corner. the old drive has the space but no pin in there.
The windows XP came with the laptop doesn't reconize the new drive, I have to install Windows 7 on this computer. Is it possible that some Drive can't be used by Windows XP? Anyone has any experience on this matter? I plan to upgrade my other Gateway MX6124 laptop with a larger hard drive. I am not sure the type of interface this computer use yet. tommorow I will take the hd out and compare with the old one from MX6214 to see if same type drive.
I would like to keep this computer with XP because some old legacy software that can't run under Windows 7.
Thanks.
Paul
 
XP should recognize your drive. Go to Control Panel>Administrative Tools>Computer Management and click Disk Management. Your drive should be listed, and you may have to partition it.
 
Most likely the laptop is running in ahci mode in the bios and you need to install the sata controller driver at the beginning of installation at the f6 prompt or see if you can change the setting to IDE/native IDE in the bios.
 
johnb35 said:
Most likely the laptop is running in ahci mode in the bios and you need to install the sata controller driver at the beginning of installation at the f6 prompt or see if you can change the setting to IDE/native IDE in the bios.
Click to expand...

But the original 80GB hard drive in this laptop is a SATA drive. Does that make any different?
Thank you.
Paul
 
It depends on how it was setup. The laptop manufacturer set it up originally correct? If you are using an original microsoft XP install cd there won't be any sata drivers on the cd. Look in the bios to see if you can change the setting, sometimes you can't.
 
Thank you guys

Thank you guys, I have installed windows 7 on this computer, I am quite happy with windows 7 except couple legacy software can't run on it. I am using the mx6124 to run those software. I just hope when I got the IDE hard drive for the mx6124, it won't give me the same problem.
Thanks.
Paul
 
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