Hard Drive not detected!

I bought wd3200lpvx to substitute my dead hdd on my dell inspiron 1525. When I changed it I had the exact same problems. I tried changing BIOS settings, etc but nothing worked.

What worked is trying to put the HDD in the laptop without using the drawer/case where you put the disk before inserting it in the laptop. After several tries I managed to put it in the SATA (when I managed to put it, it couldn't move easily as it was attached to the SATA port). Then the HDD was detected normally.

So the case is clearly the 9.5mm vs 7mm of height and there is no mechanical trigger. It's just that the 7mm height disks on the drawer won't attach to the SATA port.

My doubt is if I should leave it like this (without screwing the disk though) or to buy another 9.5mm height disk.

Thank you, stsr505089, for figuring out an issue with a thickness of the hard drive.

I was replacing a dead hard drive in Dell Inspiron 1525 and fell with the same issue: for some reason BIOS does not recognize newer thin 7 mm hard drives so you have to get a thick 9.5 mm hard drive as a replacement. So i had to buy one more new hard drive that is 9.5 mm thick. Hopefully, now everything is up and running.

That's pretty odd.

When i inserted the first new hard drive that turned out to be a 7 mm in thickness, I checked how it's seated by unscrewing the small bottom cover (that gives you access to memory modules) - the hard drive contacts were inserted into the interface slot, but despite that it was not recognized by BIOS. So that really looks like there is some mechanical switch or something that prevents using thin hard drives. Pretty bizarre solution from Dell.

Hi, try to go to the BIOS settings and check what is the SATA settings. If it is in AHCI try to change it to ATA and vice versa if it is set to ATA and then save the settings before exit. You will have to change the Cache Module to OFF before you can change to ATA.

Bizzarre as it may seem, if you pack up the drive to similar thickness as the one that works with some card or something, you'll find it works,or it did on mine. I think there is a physical switch that needs to be made inside for it to detect the hard drive, and a thin one doesn't make it

It seems like your laptop doesn't supports hard drive of more then a specific size. You can try a smaller hard drive if you have in spare. Because if your hard is working fine on usb and its only the motherboard then its defiantly the compatibility issue.

I found that there's enough slop at the rear of the drive tray opening that the drive was sliding in and just slipping below the drive connector - which I only discovered by removing the main cover panel from the underside of the laptop. Once I could see what was happening, I was able to tilt the drive up using the moulded edge cover and slot it straight in. Before that, sliding the drive in there was a convincing sense of resistance and then applying a bit more pressure it seemed to slot into place. The moulded outer cover even seemed to align well. Rebooted and drive is now recognised. Another "check the power supply first" moment!

Very interesting idea on the thickness of the drive. I have the Inspiron 15R (5537) and was using a Samsung 840 EVO disk without a problem until I upgraded to Windows 10. I suspect that upgrading to Windows 10 had nothing to do with the problem. But, moving the SSD in and out of the laptop to do backups may have caused a problem with the seating of the disk. Since then I have tried a zillion reboots, boot settings, etc with no luck. Tomorrow, I will try to add something to the thickness of the SSD and see if that works. The SSD works fine on USB. I also tried a different 840 EVO SSD in the laptop with the same results. Driver and BIOS updates from Dell didn't help. I'm running out of options but I really would like to get the SSD working because it re markedly speeds up the system.

Hi,

My Dell Inspirion N4010 working smoothly, just next morning when I switch on NO Hard drive detected and go to PXE ROM msg and not boot due to no OS found. BIOS version I think needs to be updated as shows A08 where current version is A13. but since this BIOS file is EXE not even able to run from DOS.

Please suggest what to do ASAP.

Thanks and Regards,

Santosh (santosh.ghosh9999@gmail.com)

this is an old post but im posting this in case anyone else is having problems and cant load an OS on the inspiron 1525. laptop. you need to find the dell usb recovery tool its driver which you put on a usb drive change your system to boot in usb mode start up let the tool/driver load then change to load from cd/dvd and you will find it should load ok