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Win7 does not detect hard drive on install
I have tried MANY things and now I am resorting to this forum to help find a solution to my problem.
I am trying to load win7 onto a hard drive - why is that so difficult?
The computer is an older Server which runs 2003 server OS. It has a SCSI card and 3 SCSI hard drives attached:
1 the boot drive
2 slave drive 130 GB
3 slave drive 130 GB with data like backed up digital photos and videos
That brands are Seagate Cheetah but I don't think that matters. I could be wrong.
The boot drive is only a 10GB partition where win 2003 server is installed. It is overfilled and old and my plan was to clear off and format one of the 130GB drives and load win7 on it.
I inserted my win7 dvd and chose to boot from dvd drive and after following install instructions, I get stopped every time at the screen to choose which drive to load the operating system on. Nothing is listed and it offers a message to load drivers for the drive so that windows can recognize it.
After several attempts to fix, I decided to put my WinVista dvd in and try to load Vista on the drive. That worked without a problem - went right past the screen I have been hung up on, it had my 130GB drive listed, I selected it and loaded Vista on the drive from start to finish. (That's why I said above that I don't think it matters what hdd I am using) However, my problem remains - I want to install Win7 on this drive and it is not being detected at initial install. Hardware requirements meet or exceed the recommendations for Win7 32-bit.
Here are the things I have tried (over and over and over. . .)
- Booted up 2003server drive, went to Disk Management and checked the health of the 130GB drive. All looks fine. I was able to format, change drive letter, rename, make active partition, etc. It always shows up in Disk Management - No luck when installing win7
- Downloaded a disk formatting/partitioning utility program GParted Live. Booted computer using this utility and I was able to clear partitions, format and basically get drive ready for use - No luck when installing win7
- Attempted to download the drivers for this SCSI controller:Compaq 64-Bit/66-MHz Wide Ultra3 SCSI No luck being able to find it online because the company no longer supports this board - But hey, this isn't a driver issue because of several things - the drivers ARE detected when installing VISTA, and also when the 2003 server runs. I do not think the drivers are the issue here - I could be wrong - but why would Vista have no problem and Win7 not be able to locate?
- Attempted to run the Win7 dvd while the Vista OS was running to see if I could use the UPGRADE choice rather than CUSTOOM INSTALL. At first it said I needed to have Vista SP1 installed in order to upgrade. After hours upon hours of ridiculous Vista Upgrades, I finally got SP1 loaded - tried the UPGRADE to win7 and it hits me with a message saying unable to load operating system on drive. I also tried doing this from booting the win7 dvd and it did not recognize the drive again!
- I booted up the 2003 server OS again and connected a wireless adapter so that I could access the internet. Then tried to load win7 and have it search online for the most updated drivers for my hardware. As always, this didn't work. It just asked me to inset the disk that came with my hardware, blah blah blah - and didn't find the drivers. No luck - still unable to detect the hard drive.
Ok Win7, what gives??? Why can I load WinVista to this hard drive and not Win7? I am becoming bald from pulling my hair out of my head and my kids are learning all kinds of new curse words and colorful metaphors.
Please help.
The only thing I haven't explored yet is the system BIOS. However, I would assume that if the Vista dvd has no problem installing, then why would there be a BIOS problem concerning this drive.