| SO, if you have a laptop with say an IDE hardrive and you buy an OEM, do you need cables to attach it or can you use what is already in place? |
Remember to remove the "Jumper/Adapter" from the back of the old drive, and connect it to the new drive pins (paying attention to how it is connected on the old drive pins). It should be easy to identify the adapter, and the jumper setting by viewing the back of the old drive as soon as you remove it.
The jumper/adapter allows the drive to connect to the IDE bus adapter, and tells the MoBo what the drive is set to, which will in turn allow the drive to be recognized in the BIOS.
You will also need to create a "Primary" partition to enable recognition in BIOS (usually with a utility like "FDisk", PartitionMagic", or a manufacture supplied utility), and to allow the Windows OS installation disc to see the partition and format it for the OS. This utility will be run either via a floppy drive connected to the notebook, or by running the utility from CD - making sure to set the boot sequence to allow booting from the floppy or CD first. 
