Problem?...with new hard drive

[satindemon4u]

So I when I bought my Sony Vaio laptop it came with a 5400 rpm hard drive. I figured this would be alright but I shortly after decided to buy a 7200 rpm hard drive. I ended up going with the Western Digital Scorpio Black 500gb hard drive. So I took out the old hard drive and threw the new one in and well...I get nothing. By this I mean that when I attempt to restore (I performed a backup with Acronis) it shows no drive on the list to restore to. Nothing. If I go to the backup setting just for fun it still shows nothing. So I don't believe that the computer is even recognizing the drive. Any ideas why or how to fix it?... THANKS!

EDIT: Checked the BIOS after putting it in and it shows it in there. So for whatever reason it isn't showing up in the Acronis boot utility?...

Laptop model: Sony vaio SVF152190X

UPDATE: SUCCESS! Decided to install windows 8 on the new drive and then copy over just the C drive from the old drive. Worked great and now all is good, finally!

 

[stinger608]

It is most likely because the drive is not formatted.

Just put your operating system disk in and let it boot to that. Now format your hard drive and then just shut down. Now Acronis should see the drive.

Keep us informed man.

 

[satindemon4u]

Will give it a go right now! Thank you!

 

[newtekie1]

Acronis doesn't care if the drive is formatted. It will show any drive it detects, even un-initialized drives.

If it isn't showing up in Acronis then Acronis is not recognizing it. This doesn't mean the computer isn't recognizing the drive though. Acronis sometimes does not have drivers for your SATA controller, so it won't be able to see any drive plugged into it. The problem is worsened if you are using an older version of Acronis.

There are a couple ways around this:

1.) Try going into your BIOS and setting the the SATA mode to IDE or "Compatible". Restore your backup. Then switch it back to whatever it was before booting into Windows.

2.) Connect the old drive and the new drive to a different computer. Clone the old drive to the new drive with Acronis. Then put the new drive in the laptop.

 

[liamstears]

Acronis doesn't care if the drive is formatted. It will show any drive it detects, even un-initialized drives.

If it isn't showing up in Acronis then Acronis is not recognizing it. This doesn't mean the computer isn't recognizing the drive though. Acronis sometimes does not have drivers for your SATA controller, so it won't be able to see any drive plugged into it. The problem is worsened if you are using an older version of Acronis.

There are a couple ways around this:

1.) Try going into your BIOS and setting the the SATA mode to IDE or "Compatible". Restore your backup. Then switch it back to whatever it was before booting into Windows.

2.) Connect the old drive and the new drive to a different computer. Clone the old drive to the new drive with Acronis. Then put the new drive in the laptop.

Second this, sata controller drivers can be a real pain especially with older version of software, using a second computer to clone the drive will be quick and easy

 

[satindemon4u]

Acronis doesn't care if the drive is formatted. It will show any drive it detects, even un-initialized drives.

If it isn't showing up in Acronis then Acronis is not recognizing it. This doesn't mean the computer isn't recognizing the drive though. Acronis sometimes does not have drivers for your SATA controller, so it won't be able to see any drive plugged into it. The problem is worsened if you are using an older version of Acronis.

There are a couple ways around this:

1.) Try going into your BIOS and setting the the SATA mode to IDE or "Compatible". Restore your backup. Then switch it back to whatever it was before booting into Windows.

2.) Connect the old drive and the new drive to a different computer. Clone the old drive to the new drive with Acronis. Then put the new drive in the laptop.

Well I thought that sounded like a great idea. However I quickly found a problem. I am on a laptop which as we know limits the BIOS much more than on a desktop. So with that being said, there is no option to change the connection type for the hard drive. Actually, I can't change any settings that have to do with the hard drive (except for boot order).
:/

 

[liamstears]

Well I thought that sounded like a great idea. However I quickly found a problem. I am on a laptop which as we know limits the BIOS much more than on a desktop. So with that being said, there is no option to change the connection type for the hard drive. Actually, I can't change any settings that have to do with the hard drive (except for boot order).
:/

In that case go for the second pc option and use that to clone the drive over or if you have an external case at all clone it over into the external hdd case then pop it in...

 

[THRiLL KiLL]

is ahci enabled? if so the restore cd may not have drivers.

If you disable ahci, then it will emulate ide, and then you can do the restore, however you may have to choose the option to restore to diffrent hardware, as your original system may have that set up


edit: i missed the above posting where you did this.

I would download the sata driver, and there should be an option in the acronis restore cd to use your own driver, then it will see your drive for restore

 

[liamstears]

is ahci enabled? if so the restore cd may not have drivers.

If you disable ahci, then it will emulate ide, and then you can do the restore, however you may have to choose the option to restore to diffrent hardware, as your original system may have that set up

In this case he cannot do this as the laptop will not allow it as many laptops now have crippled bios

 

[Fourstaff]

Do you have a connector to connect the harddrive to your laptop? Try doing that and see if your laptop can recognise the drive (on Device Manager). If it does, you might need to do something like this: http://www.jwgoerlich.us/blogengine...Diskpart-to-Create-and-Format-Partitions.aspx

I spent many minutes wondering why my 3Tb drive is not recognised by my PC, only for me to remember to set it to GPT rather than MBR (why they don't do this in factory is beyond me).

 

[THRiLL KiLL]

what is the model of laptop?

 

[satindemon4u]

is ahci enabled? if so the restore cd may not have drivers.

If you disable ahci, then it will emulate ide, and then you can do the restore, however you may have to choose the option to restore to diffrent hardware, as your original system may have that set up


edit: i missed the above posting where you did this.

I would download the sata driver, and there should be an option in the acronis restore cd to use your own driver, then it will see your drive for restore

The only other option I can switch to is Legacy. I tried that just in case and still no luck,

Do you have a connector to connect the harddrive to your laptop? Try doing that and see if your laptop can recognise the drive (on Device Manager). If it does, you might need to do something like this: http://www.jwgoerlich.us/blogengine...Diskpart-to-Create-and-Format-Partitions.aspx

I spent many minutes wondering why my 3Tb drive is not recognised by my PC, only for me to remember to set it to GPT rather than MBR (why they don't do this in factory is beyond me).

I have nothing to plug it in :/ wish I did at this point!

what is the model of laptop?

Sony vaio SVF152190X

 

[Fourstaff]

Boot off a USB stick or DVD?

 

[satindemon4u]

Boot off a USB stick or DVD?

What do you mean? What am I booting?

 

[Fourstaff]

What do you mean? What am I booting?

Put new harddisk in, boot laptop using a memory stick/cd.

 

[Aquinus]

Does the drive show up in the BIOS? If not, then you need to send it back to WD. Most utilities won't care if it's AHCI or not.

 

[satindemon4u]

Put new harddisk in, boot laptop using a memory stick/cd.

Have tried to boot with like...a windows installation CD but am currently having a problem with that. Like I said, I can boot off of a cd into Acronis just fine

Does the drive show up in the BIOS? If not, then you need to send it back to WD. Most utilities won't care if it's AHCI or not.

It does show up in bios and I can hear it spin, so that's good.

 

[stinger608]

Booting from the Windows DVD is having a problem? I mean, the windows DVD is not seeing the drive? If it can see the drive, can you format it through the Windows DVD?

 

[satindemon4u]

Well, having a bit of a problem loading the DVD. When I put in the Acronis CD and select to boot from outside media it boots fine. When I put in the Windows CD it just...well, says it failed to load the media. >.<

 

[stinger608]

Hmm, that sounds like your windows disk is bad.

If you have a way of burning an ISO image to a disk, here is the official Windows 7 ISO's:

http://www.w7forums.com/threads/official-windows-7-sp1-iso-image-downloads.12325/

Just find the same version your current disk is and burn the image to a disk and try that.

 

[satindemon4u]

Ok so, I got the disk to boot, thank you stinger. Now here is the new(ish) problem. When I go to wipe the new drive the windows installer automatically wants to partition it into like...3 different drives. This makes trying to restore the old drive a little more difficult. Unless, can I just back up the files portion of the old drive and leave the MBR, recovery, etc. partitions?

 

[stinger608]

Yea it will partition the drive into at least 2 partitions. Not a problem as win 7 has to have that one silly 100mb partition. It will of course leave the majority of the drive for the OS. Once you have it partitioned just click (highlight) the large partition and do the format. Once the format is done just X out of the win 7 disk. It will give you some "are you sure" LOL pop ups, so just get exited out..

Now use your Acronis disk to recover the backup.

Keep us posted bro.

 

[satindemon4u]

Yea it will partition the drive into at least 2 partitions. Not a problem as win 7 has to have that one silly 100mb partition. It will of course leave the majority of the drive for the OS. Once you have it partitioned just click (highlight) the large partition and do the format. Once the format is done just X out of the win 7 disk. It will give you some "are you sure" LOL pop ups, so just get exited out..

Now use your Acronis disk to recover the backup.

Keep us posted bro.

Now in Acronis it has the option to back up each individual partition. Should I backup ALL of them (including the MBR, etc etc.) or should I just back up the C partition? Because if I backup all of them it later asks me where I want to restore them to. Which starts to get tricky when it comes down to restoring the MBR and whatnot.

EDIT: Ok spoke to soon. It seems that I can never boot a windows 7 disk, but I can boot a windows 8 disk? My laptop is windows 8 but I wouldn't think that would effect it. Should I just perform the same procedure through the windows 8 disk?

 

[stinger608]

Oh I assumed you were using win 7, sorry. Yea it should work the same with the win 8 disk

 

[satindemon4u]

Oh I assumed you were using win 7, sorry. Yea it should work the same with the win 8 disk

Well I ran into a new problem haha. When I was backing up the old drive I got an error about one of the sectors. I ignored it and finished the backup. Then when restoring it hit that same block and when choosing to ignore it, it stops the restore. So right now I am doing a disk check. Hopefully that will fix it. Shall keep you posted. Hopefully this works in the end. Just want to use this new drive already. Damn.