Fitting 500GB SATA WD5000AAKS stops PC booting

[oldhand]

Brand new Dell Dimension 9200. Vista 32-Bit Home Premium. 3GB Ram. Fitted a new Western Digital 500GB hard drive as a 2nd device. 1st device is a 250 GB drive. Also have two DVD burners. 1st HD is in SATA 0, 1st DVD is in SATA 4, 2nd DVD is in SATA 5. Put new HD is SATA 1. All this is in the on-disc Dell manual. Enabled all SATA ports and checked boot sequence.
When all is connected the PC does not easily go past the first DELL logo splash screen Cannot get into BIOS. After nearly 5 minutes the PC will boot but does not 'see' or recognise the new drive. Cannot see it in Device Manager or Windows Explorer.
If I disconnect the SATA data cable to the new drive the PC works perfectly except without the new drive of course.
Any suggestions about how to get this to work? Am I doing something wrong? Is the HD too big? The Dell manual says a 500GB drive will work.

[Coops]

Have you got the latest BIOS for your Dell PC??

Do you have another PC you can connect HDD to just to check it detects ok??

[oldhand]

Hard to say if I have the latest BIOS from Dell but I would hope I have since the machine is less than 2 months old. I may be able to try the drive in a work computer.
Just wondered if this is as simple as the drive needing to be formatted first. I have NOT formatted it so far because I have not been able to successfully boot the PC or to get it to 'see' the drive anyway.
If I ever DO get it running, what software should I use to format? The drive was supplied brand new but with no documentation.

[Coops]

If this is just a second drive to be used in conjunction with a bootable OS drive. Just format the new drive from inside your operating system.

[oldhand]

My problem is that I cannot get the PC to see the new drive at all. It is indeed intended to be a secondary backup drive. I am going to take it to work and ask one of PC technicians to see if it can be 'seen' on one of our test machines and if so, to format it from there. Hopefully if that works then my home machine will also see it.

[anthonygriff]

Have you set it as master?

All sata drives need to be set as master.

[oldhand]

The SATA drive, as with all new ones, does not have jumpers and does not have to be set in the same way as the older IDE/EIDE drives. Each one has its own data cable and is simply set in the boot sequence in the bios for priority. Although this WD unit has the jumper pins fitted, it does NOT have any jumpers and a clear statement on the label on the drive itself say that no jumpers are required.
But thanks for the suggestion anyway as it might have been the reason if this was an earlier setup.

[Coops]

It should not need jumped.

The problem is if the Dell BIOS is not recognising the HDD you will still have issue with it even if you format it on another system.

The BIOS does not care if a drive is formatted or not. All it is looking for is a working drive it can communicate with. Nothing more, nothing less.

So this could still be problem for you even if drive proves to be working fine in another system

[oldhand]

Thanks Coops. Hmmm, this is all food for thought indeed. I can't ask Dell for help because all they will say, as they have in the past, is that as they did not supply the drive they cannot comment. In the boot sequence of my bios it lists an Onboard Sata drive (Not Present). Is it possible this is preventing the bios looking for the actual drive? If I delete that entry and then re-fit the new drive and reboot, is it possible the computer will then correctly find the thing?
I flashed the bios last night with the latest update from Dell but there was no difference to the situation with the drive.
Is it possible the drive itself, IS, after all, faulty and would the best option be to return it to Novatech for them to test and perhaps replace?
All a bit awkward, isn't it?

[Coops]

Could it be faulty............ Yes this is possible and obviously i have to note that. Testing it in another system that is not DELL to see if it works would prove if the drive does or does not work. It is also possbile that the DELL board does not like the make of HDD. Once again this is also a possible.

Only through the process of testing can we determine if the Dell PC is cause

[oldhand]

Thanks again Coops. I have since spoken to a really helpful guy at Novatech, Danno, and he has arranged for the unit to go back to them for testing. I have to say, their after-sales service is excellent. The ability to speak to a technician in a live online chat programme is such a help. But I really appreciate the help you have offered here too. I will post an update once I have something to report about the problem.