Hard drive not recognized by laptop

[Sacchidananda]

Hi,
My laptop which is an IBM thinkpad 310ed have the disk of 2.1 gb in size. few months my notebook ceased detecting my hard disk.guessing it might be an issue with the went for a new product with different parameters than the old one.it was a western digital 10 GB disk.my laptop disk came in a cover with a connector that was connected to the pins, and adapted the cover and the connector to the new disk. I put the new disk in the laptop and tried to fdisk to get a message saying that there was no fixed disk. I also went to the bios and the disk was not recognized there also. So am keep thinking now that the disk might have not been adapted correctly to the cover and to the connector. can any one give necessary steps to install the thing in proper way..

any helps will be brilliant !!!
thanks in advance.

[Rawko]

Can you update the ThinkPad system BIOS.If the latest BIOS can't solve the issue, then better recreate the MBR (Master Boot Record)....this is useful in order to recreate the Master Boot Record using FDISK. Boot the system from a boot disk that has the same level of operating system that is installed on the hard disk drive. At the A: prompt type C: and press the Enter key. Type FDISK/MBR and press the Enter key. After the command runs you will come back to the C: prompt. Remove the boot disk and reboot the system.

[T.J.]

Begin troubleshooting by check BIOS setting first the fact that I lost the first drive might mean a bad setup or a dead drive controller. The size is not at all matter of fact you'll only be able to use 8 gigs on the disk.Make sure that the Master/Slave setting on the hard-drive matches the settings in the BIOS.
you may be checked the IDE connections, but just confirm that there are no bent pins at all. Sometimes you can't always spot them. Also, check that the Molex Power connector going to the drive is live and working

[Killen]

Your new drive is compatible with your notebook or what? XP usually needs a driver to detect SATA drives .you may hold dwon F6 to load 3d party drivers."Corrupt" Hard drives are often repairable with chkdsk, .try a BIOS update? try flashing the BIOS with an upgraded version. If you don't know how to do this or if you're not to good with computers, get someone at a tech store, or maybe a friend that is great with laptops do it, that may fix your problem.