The laptop is an older Inspiron 2500 Celeron. I took out the old 5GB HDD and have been trying to replace it with a new Western Digital Scorpio 40GB. I updated the BIOS and still have no idea why the laptop won't see the new hard drive and am wondering if anyone has any ideas. Just about every piece of documentation I have read or found has been no help; I have researched this problem to the point of exhaustion. Anything from simple to complex would be a huge help! Thanks, Nick nah_40@hotmail.com

I don't know, have you been to the manufacturer's site to see if there is a "list" of supported hardware, both for the laptop, and for the hard drive? Are you sure the hdd is good? You can get a simple adaptor connector that will let you plug the laptop drive into your desktop. Are there any jumpers? I do have a Thinkpad 600X, and I have one older drive that simply will not work in the thing.

Does the BIOS have an option to set the IDE access mode to LBA, as opposed to CHS?

Thank you for the quick responses! Answer to question 1: I have been to Dell and Western Digital's websites and have went through every piece of documentation I could find. There was nothing there about supported hardware; I actually searched for a while looking for that list. I couldn't find anything remotely close to it. Answer to question 2: I thought to look for that too but I couldn't find it anywhere. The BIOS has no options pertaining to the hard drive. Even when a working hard drive was attached there are still no options to change anything dealing with it. I have still yet to find any new info online. Thanks, Nick nah_40@hotmail.com

Also (in response to question #1): There are jumper "prongs" but no jumper attached. The old hard drive had the same prongs but no jumpers on it either. Also, I'm not sure if the HDD is good or not. It is brand new from NewEgg though so I would assume it to be working, but you never know I guess. Thanks.

I have tried updating HDD's on laptops & it is a minefield due to the power supply limitations, frankly trying to go from a 5GB HDD to 40GB, I'd say you stand no chance & I would be very surprised if the drive can even spin up. Sorry, but that's my experience. Bob Mitchell.

Bob is right on. One of my laptops will not spin up Quantum drives though it's quite happy with other types. The Quantum drives are OK as I use one in a different laptop. Some laptops are looking for signals that aren't provided by some HDDs so they'll never work. Bryan