Hi,

I have recently purchased a new Western Digital Caviar IDE Hard drive for my older Hp Pavilion 7955 Desktop. The other hard drive died on me about a month back. The factory hard drive was a 40 gig and the new one I purchased is a 500 gig.

Anyway I ran into a little problem...When I boot off the windows XP CD I am able to begin the install. However when the COMPUTER restarts part way through the install I receive a message saying that it cannot find the hard drive. I called Western Digital about this ISSUE and they said that the new hard drive requires an 80 pin IDE cable and the cable I have in the computer is most likely a 40pin IDE.

My question is would simply purchasing an 80 pin IDE cable let me use this hard drive or am I screwed and have to send the hard drive back?Yes.
It should solve it.
Didn't you recieve a cable with the drive ? ?Sadly no...I ordered it from New Egg.Well I replaced the cable but went back into the BIOS and no hard drive is listed...This is strange. Why would Windows setup pick up the hd but not bios?

Upon turning the computer on I receive this message.

Detecting Primary Master
Detecting Primary Slave None
Secondary Master - CD
Secondary Slave - DVD

Primary Master Drive Fails

(Note this is the only HD in the computer and it has no jumpers in it currently).

Beneath this message it allows me to access the BIOS or continue. If I continue I go through the XP install process from the CD and then I receive the auto reboot message and it will bring me back to the same screen that I posted with the Drives again with the choice to continue...so it is an endless cycle that doesnt allow me to get past the initial stage of installing the OS.

Hope that makes sense. If BIOS doesn't see it, it's not going to work. MOTHERBOARD may not support a drive that big.
http://wdc.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/wdc.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=936&p_created=1049500809&p_sid=x8LRRpbk&p_accessibility=0&p_redirect=&p_srch=1&p_lva=&p_sp=cF9zcmNoPTEmcF9zb3J0X2J5PSZwX2dyaWRzb3J0PSZwX3Jvd19jbnQ9OTYsOTYmcF9wcm9kcz0yMjcsMjk1JnBfY2F0cz0xMjMmcF9wdj0yLjI5NSZwX2N2PTEuMTIzJnBfcGFnZT0y&p_li=&p_topview=1




http://wdc.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/wdc.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=981&p_created=1052339456&p_sid=x8LRRpbk&p_accessibility=0&p_redirect=&p_srch=1&p_lva=&p_sp=cF9zcmNoPTEmcF9zb3J0X2J5PSZwX2dyaWRzb3J0PSZwX3Jvd19jbnQ9OTYsOTYmcF9wcm9kcz0yMjcsMjk1JnBfY2F0cz0xMjMmcF9wdj0yLjI5NSZwX2N2PTEuMTIzJnBfcGFnZT0x&p_li=&p_topview=1#patadesktopjumpWould updating BIOS fix the problem?Quote from: Ecardius on October 01, 2010, 01:47:46 PM

Would updating BIOS fix the problem?