Alright, so I replaced my old ide hard drive with a western digital sata one, but the problem is...when I turn on the computer, it's not even recognizing it! It's like i have no harddrive in there at all! The harddrive doesn't even turn on...I mean i used it in another computer and it worked fine, but when I put it in this one, it doesn't even seem to turn on (no noise or vibrations). Everything else works fine. All help is very appreciated.

Thank you

Seems like its a power issue if it doesn't even spin at all.

Yeah...are you sure you plugged in the power cable? I know that when sometimes rushing, i've plugged in the data cable, but forgot the power cable.......more times than i care to admit. GL

Many people are still familiarizing themselves with SATA devices. I know one guy - in his zeal to make sure everything was plugged in correctly - connected the SATA power connector and the 4-pin Molex connector Make sure only one power connector is plugged in to the HDD - either one will work, but not both.

Yeah I checked that I plugged in the power connector in correctly, and I tried almost all 4 pin connectors and it still doesn't even turn on! And what do you mean Bab? I plugged in the sata connector to the motherboard and the 4 pin connector to the harddrive...I REALLY don't think the harddrive just stopped working all of a sudden. It's a western digital 16mb cache 7200 rpm sata drive, it was working perfectly before but I'm really not sure what the problem is. I'll try to use another power supply in there but I doubt that's the problem.

Appreciate all help guys

Try the drive in the origional computer or another one as a check instead of putting in a new PS.

Alright, I changed some wires around and I guess it decided to turn on this time, but, I am still getting a disk boot error failure message. What does it mean? I made sure that I plugged everything right, and I still get the message.

I've little to no experience in changing hard drives so someone please correct me here if I'm wrong, but don't you need to install an OS?

Check your BIOS and see if it recognises the drive as well. May need to play around with the SATA settings in there. Maybe you don't have the SATA drive set as a boot device?

you say you replaced the harddrive, so it seems you only have a new unformatted drive, or a previously used formatted drive from another computer. either case since your new motherboard is different from the one whose drivers are installed in the WD, then you have to format and install XP with a boot CD. there's a procedure to change motherboard drivers but it seems that's not what you want to do.

if you already have a drive in your pc and the WD is a 2nd one, you may have to go in device management and format/assign it a letter. make sure you are booting from the right device, in the BIOS.

Which drive has your OS on it. Make sure that that one is set to first boot device. What is on that drive?

I was aware that you don't plug in both power connectors at once... but I am curious... does that damage the drive?

I was aware that you don't plug in both power connectors at once... but I am curious... does that damage the drive?

It will cook either the hd or your power supply, depending on how the hd connections are wired. Either way somethings gonna die.