Travelmate P453 refuses to recognize new hard drive(s)

My hard disk was acting flakey so I decided to put in a new disk. I have put in a new WD Blue 500GB drive and it is recognized in the bios but cannot load windows onto it. The disk driver from the Acer site will not load. Under one of the Windows refresh/replace options it says the disk is locked. This disk is stock with no jumpers set. I then updated bios to latest and greatest v2.19 and still no solution. I then purchased a WD Black (same type as what was originally in the machine) and it is not even recognized by the bios.

Tried installing with recovery disk and vanilla windows.

Anyone have an idea of what the issue could be? I did download the most recent AHCI driver from the Acer site and tried to use the old one as well.

About to punt my first and last Acer to the curb.

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IronFly

HDD locked, have you checked on BIOS if it's password is set as frozen?

http://acer.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/32674/~/bios-password-frozen

Tmex

I did check that out and there was no password. Bascally went through everything in the bios. And it wouldn't account for the machine not recognizing the WD Black drive I installed.

IronFly

when you boot from the windows installation media, are you able to reache a command prompt?

if so, try this:

type

diskpart
then on diskpart type
list disk
take note of the correct disk ID to erase
type
select disk x
(x is the ID of your HDD to erase)
type
clean

then reboot and try to install windows again.

About WD black not recognised on BIOS, can be some incompatibility.

IronFly

those are the official HDD for your P453

hdd.png

Tmex

I will take this list and run to my local hardware store. This is the last shot. Will let you know how it goes.

IronFly

i don't want to bring bad luck but.....are you sure it was your old HDD the real problem and not the SATA controller?

3 HDDs not working is not a good sign, i would take the laptop to the shop too.

Tmex

I will try an officially supported HD. Otherwise not worth the money for labour and parts at the shop. Was cheapo machine. It will go to the big laptop junkpile or donated to a charity that can fix it.

Tmex

So that I would follow up with the solution. I got a third drive from the list that Ironfly gave me and the Seagate 500gb drive worked. Machine is back up and running.