SOLVED I've never come across a problem like this

[RicardoMountabong]

Hi everyone,
I've never posted about a computer problem before because I've always found the answer online but this time I'm stumped. My mom's hard drive on her Dell Latitude failed so we got a new 500gb one. She didn't have an install disk (the computer was bought used from eBay) so I had to put the OS on a bootable thumb drive (Windows 7 Professional). It goes fine until we get to the screen that asks you which drive to put the OS on, and it can't find any. The drive doesn't show up in BIOS either- it says <none>. I've tried partitioning & formatting the drive- it works fine on any other computer. I also put a different hard drive in the Dell to see if there was something wrong with the connection & it saw that one just fine. I tried installing (loading) SATA controller drivers & any other drivers I can find that might be needed & they install just fine but it still can't see the HDD. BTW, I can't get to advanced boot options (F8)- I'm assuming that's because there's no OS? I've tried everything I can find but nothing's worked. The HDD is from Mediamax model WL500GLSA6454S & the Latitude is model E4310. Any help would be greatly appreciated, thank you!!

 

[RicardoMountabong]

I can't believe I didn't think of this before- do you think it could be because the new HDD is slim and the original was regular sized laptop HDD?

 

[RicardoMountabong]

That was it!! Instead of having the computer upside down when I slid in the HDD (it slides into a port on the side),I had it right side up so the connections would line up. I turned on the computer & now it sees it. I can't believe I spent two weeks on this!