HELP! 500GB Sata drive won't work in my HP DV9000 laptop

Hi

Can anyone help me?

I've bought a 500GB Western Digital 2.5 inch hard disc and caddy to fit in the second hard disk bay on my HP DV9000 laptop.

Unfortunately the laptop does not see it when fitted.
I'm no computer expert but I though there were no size limit restrictions with SATA drives?

I contacted HP and they said the laptop only takes upto 200GB drives?

Is there anyway I can get the 500GB drive to work in the laptop by partitioning etc?

Any help greatly appreciated to get round what is looking like an expensive mistake.

Cheers

Thanks for your input.

The BIOS does not see the 500GB disk at all. So I cannot even format it to the 200GB limit suggested by HP. I do not have a desktop pc either unfortunately.

Maybe I could buy a USB SATA adapter and partion it that way?

As posted on another HP Pavilon thread...

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc [...] c=en&cc=us

I have the same laptop and bought the same hard drive as you this week. I had the same problems at first with the connector that came with my caddy, it wouldn't allow the hdd to lay flat correctly in the hard drive bay. I put the 500gb in the secondary and it didn't work with the old hdd because the system would hang on boot.

SOLUTION

You have to have the 500gb in the "primary slot" and you need a "OS" on it to. So "clone" your old hdd to the new using a disk imaging software and a usb sata adapter. After it's done place it back in the 1st slot(you don't need to mess with jumper settings or anything either) just put it in as is. After your 1st boot, Vista will ask you to authorize your copy. After you get into windows desktop, just format your old primary hdd you just replaced and place that in the secondary hdd. You'll be good to go, with 450+ gb.