2.5" Laptop drive interface problem -- could use help (SATA vs SATA II)

[ms960]

So I bought a WD Scorpio Blue (WD3200BEVT) to replace a small hard drive on my laptop. My laptop is a few years old and has a SATA interface, so I did my research and thought I figured out that a SATA II drive was backward compatible with a SATA interface.

The WD drive arrived today and when I pulled the old drive out, it was very obvious that the WD drive didn't have the same connectors that the old Toshiba drive did. Actually, the connectors looked right, but there was plastic molding around the connectors on the WD drive that are preventing the connectors from seating into the drive enclosure. There is no way the WD drive will connect to the connectors inside the drive bay on my laptop -- the configuration of connectors is just all wrong.

So, the question is, what do I need to look for when buying a new drive for my laptop? I really don't want to buy another drive only to find out it's the wrong kind as well.

Any and all help is greatly appreciated.

 

[duxducis]

hmm interesting thou the model # and name of your laptop would help, also model # of old hard drive

in my experience the only thing to look in laptop HD is backward compatibility, max size (in GB) and how thick the HD is. Some laptops might have bridges that goes from Motherboard port to hard drive

Could you upload some pictures?

 

[ms960]

I found the problem. There was an adapter on the old drive that had to be removed and attached to the new drive to get it to connect to the computer. Initially I didn't think there was an adapter because it looked like part of the drive, but with a little investigation I did find it and wiggle it off. All is well now.

Thanks!