How do I get my laptop to recognize it's new HD?

Okay, so, this isn’t in the computer skicky, and a few hours of Googling has failed to yield any results. I Pitted HP and Toshiba over an HD failure a couple of months ago, and I finally have my new HD in hand from Toshiba. After putting it into the “caddy” which I kept from the old one, the HD seems to fit well and go in the way that I expected like with the old drive. The problem is, once I start up the computer with the Windows XP CD in the CD-drive, the CD spins for a while, some dialog about a “Pre-Boot Environment” pops up, and then it leaves me with, “Operating system not found.”

Okay, so I went through the boot orders and set up menu’s, and the significant thing I noticed there was that under the blue set up screen, under Internal Hard Drives, it says [None] and the settings are on some sort of auto-detect. Also pertinent, through all of this the little LED which flashes whenever the HD is working never lights up.

Basically, it seems as if my system is completely not recognizing the new HD even though the BIOS settings are all on auto. What should I do to test this thing and figure out why it isn’t working? Is there someway I can force the system to think there’s an HD there and see if I can make it work with the HD?

All help is appreciated. Thanks,
threemae

Have you formatted the drive?

Based on this, it sounds like the BIOS doesn’t even see the hard drive. If that’s the case, there’s no way to install Windows XP. The first thing to check is whether the drive was correctly inserted into the caddy, and not upside down or backwards. Pull the hard drive out and make sure none of the pins are bent. When you insert the drive, you should be able to feel that the drive seats properly to the connector.

Basically, though, if the drive is inserted correctly, it will seat properly if you can screw it down.

Once the BIOS sees the drive, boot from the Windows XP CD and make sure to select the option to boot from the CD drive and not the hard drive.

Dewey Finn has the right steps.
Having everything set to ‘Auto’ under the BIOS is normal. When the PC POSTs, it’ll say ‘Detecting devices’ or something, then list your HDs, optical drives, etc. If your new drive doesn’t get listed here, later software/OSs/etc. aren’t ever going to be able to detect it either.

In the BIOS, there should be an option to detect what HD is installed and use that setting instead. If that feature doesn’t work, then the HD really isn’t being detected at all.

Okay, I’m 90% certain that the HD is seated correctly, and the BIOS is set to Auto for the HD, but it still just ain’t happening. However, even when I just tell it to boot from the CD, it doesn’t bring up the XP setup, even without the HD recognized. If the HD was gone, wouldn’t the CD still run? I guess I might try to get one of those CD bootable Linux’es on a CD and see if it isn’t some sort of motherboard problem.

Is there any way I can force the computer to undergo a recheck of all the things like HD’s? I guess that would be a POST? It just doesn’t seem to be working with it right now.

Some things to check

1: Just like the larger 3.5 drives many 2.5 drives require proper jumpering. Double check this

2: You need to double and triple check that you have the drive seated and plugged to the IDE cable header socket correctly. Unlike 3.5 drives many 2.5 drives CAN be connected backwards (and will not work)

3: Make sure your notebook MB BIOS can handle the size of the drive you have installed if it is larger than the old drive.