Installing WD Scorpio 160GB HD into Laptop

Hey,

I just bought a brand new WD Scorpio 160GB SATA/150 5400RPM 8MB 2.5" HDD for my Dell Inspiron 6000 laptop that is running on Windows XP.
So I easily took out my old hard drive and put the new one in and since the new harddrive has no operating system on it, I enter the Re-installation disc that came with my laptop into it to load XP onto the new HD.
The problem is after the first step in the Booting from the cd process my computer tells me that it doesn't recognize a Hard Drive installed.
I don't think I'm skipping a step and I'm pretty positive that I'm doing everything right but obviously I'm not.

please help!

you;ll probably find that the drivers for the hard drive dont come default with the laptops restore disks... if you go to WD's site you'll probably find either a utility or driver disk to help you, unfortunately the only thing i can think of is to get either vista (which detects a much wider range of hdd's) or get a retail copy of XP (with CD key just in case, this can be changed for a pukker key at a later date) and when it starts up and says press f6 to load aditional drivers, use the driver that came on the website, or if the restore cd's give you the option to, press f6 when they tell you too... unfortunately, manufacturers dont like you adding new hdd's/other equipment to their hardware and the restore disks are meant to be used as return to factory setting tools, if the factory hardware isnt there then anything else wont be supported... sorry to put you in a difficult spot

One could also just acronis the drive, and move image to new drive and be up and running very quickly...

this is true, assuming the old drive is still images ok