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#11
Try another troubleshooter: Power down. Disconnect the sata cable at drive end, then reconnect it into your primary drive. Power up again.
If it doesnt boot into windows, then we can confirm that the sata port itself is naffed, and probably requires a good clean.
Also, could you fill in your system specs so we know what gear your using.
In particular, what is your motherboard?
That was part of testing the cables. So, no, it didn't help. I appreciate the help, but I keep saying I already tested these things; I said it in post one.
The motherboard is an ASUS P5Q... but again, that doesn't make sense because yesterday morning, while I was still running Vista, everything was fine; after I installed 7, 2nd hard drive disappears, and that makes no sense because the motherboard should be unaffected by the install and that is where the BIOS information is.
So to repeat: On Vista yesterday, everything is fine and 100% a-ok. I install win7 while making ZERO physical changes to the tower, 2nd internal hard drive is not found. All of the cables and ports check out and work. The hard drive has been pulled out, tested and found to be in perfect working order. The computer has been started with and without the 2nd hard drive in it, and with the first hard drive hooked up to its cables and in its port. All of this was done, before I made the first post.
Something made the second drive inactive or hidden for some reason. It still should be seen in the bios regardless if the drive is working and plugged in correctly.
Don't hesitate to double check cables just the same since they can fool you at times especially if they have loose contacts or the port or drive end is seeing a bit of play where the end lifts up or eases out a little unnoticed when moving the case around to get in and out of it.
The bios part is strictly cable or drive related when not showing there. The vanishing drive originally came in en external enclosure and was simply installed for internal use when finding this. Not being seen in the bios however can be the power connector as well as the ends of the data cable being loose.
With all this done have you booted back into Vista since the drive was reinstalled to see if it still shows? If so you may have seen a bad install of 7 being another likely cause to consider. 7 generally spots any changes on the spot having multiple drives in use here.
No, no, no. The vanishing drive has nothing to do with an external enclosure, and no the cables aren't loose. There was no way for them to get loose in the act of inserting a windows 7 disk and installing it. I did not open up my computer and loosen the cables when I installed 7, nor did I kick my desk, the tower, or jump around the apartment in lead shoes. It is physically impossible for the cables to have become an issue. *headdesks* Here's why:
1) the cables couldn't be the problem because there was no change to them and everyone has ignored the fact that I said that I had checked them in the first post, which is a little insulting and makes me wonder if I'm being told to do the noob stuff because I'm a girl when anyone with a brain would have already checked that stuff at least 3 times; 2) that notwithstanding, they were checked multiple times and they work, and, again, I said that in the first post. Please get off of the cables because it is completely 100% impossible for that to be the problem. In fact, there is no hardware problem at all. Every piece checks out. How do I know it checks out? Because I triple checked it before I made post 1.
Additionally, I can't go back into Vista, because Vista is gone. I would have to reinstall it to get it back and I'm not about to do that.
Thanks, but no one here has suggested anything that I haven't already tried that I could do. This has been a frustrating experience... but I'm convinced this forum can't help. Thanks anyway for your time and your responses.
Because 9 out of 10 times its the 'noob stuff' thats at fault.
If its not appearing in bios, it has something to do with hardware.
unplug all your drives - connect up only the suspect one and try to install windows7 on it..
if it won't install - it's probably gone duff..
if it's still under guarantee - whizz it back to the vendors for a replacement..
does it show up in Disk Management..??