Anyone any ideas why so far 2 different 2.5 IDE laptop drives (WD 320GB and Samsung 120GB) don't get seen by the BIOS?
Tried Dell Diagnostics disk which actually picks up identification info but flashes error that no valid FAT partition on the disk.
Tried formatting 25GB partition on another machine with NTFS but no joy when slotting into the laptop. It is as if the drive doesn't exist (except for the limited recognition by Dell Diagnostics).
After a lot of research into LBA etc I see that the Intel chipset is 830 so I am guessing the 48bit LBA is not supported by my laptop/BIOS. So in theory I am restricted to drives <137GB. However, I seem to get the same error with the Samsung 120GB. (Just to recap neither of the drives were dead as they were seen fine by BIOS of a desktop fitted with suitable adaptor).
In hindsight I should have got the guys that formatted the NTFS to use FAT instead. They didn't supply the drive so I can't really ask them to get involved again, but I could buy a cheap USB caddy and try that myself if I could be convinced it had a good chance of working.
Tried booting from various bootable utilities, Western Digital, Samsung, Linux etc etc all the same result Disk invisible.
Any ideas would be appreciated.
Thanks.
Tried Dell Diagnostics disk which actually picks up identification info but flashes error that no valid FAT partition on the disk.
Tried formatting 25GB partition on another machine with NTFS but no joy when slotting into the laptop. It is as if the drive doesn't exist (except for the limited recognition by Dell Diagnostics).
After a lot of research into LBA etc I see that the Intel chipset is 830 so I am guessing the 48bit LBA is not supported by my laptop/BIOS. So in theory I am restricted to drives <137GB. However, I seem to get the same error with the Samsung 120GB. (Just to recap neither of the drives were dead as they were seen fine by BIOS of a desktop fitted with suitable adaptor).
In hindsight I should have got the guys that formatted the NTFS to use FAT instead. They didn't supply the drive so I can't really ask them to get involved again, but I could buy a cheap USB caddy and try that myself if I could be convinced it had a good chance of working.
Tried booting from various bootable utilities, Western Digital, Samsung, Linux etc etc all the same result Disk invisible.
Any ideas would be appreciated.
Thanks.