New computer, "no drives were found," HDD not on BIOS

So, I just built my first computer, components below:

G.SKILL Sniper Low Voltage Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800)
SAPPHIRE Radeon HD 7850 2GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 x16 HDCP
SAMSUNG Spinpoint F3 HD103SJ 1TB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5"
Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 64-bit - OEM
Intel Core i5-3450 Ivy Bridge 3.1GHz (3.5GHz Turbo) LGA 1155 77W Quad-Core
GIGABYTE GA-Z77-D3H LGA 1155 Intel Z77 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard

Everything was working perfectly, until I tried installing Windows 7.

After meddling with the BIOS settings, I got the Windows to start installing. However, after the "installing features" part finished, the computer stopped. I waited for a few minutes before an error message appeared. I forgot to write down the error because I was tired and thought it would resolve itself. Yes, I am a moron.

Anyways, I restared the installation, but this time, I got the "No drives were found. Click load driver to provide a mass storage driver for installation." message. I looked up the solution and checked the BIOS, when, to my surprise, I could not find the SATA connection to my HDD.

I'm really quite stuck here, I tried all the combinations of SATA that I could, and still the HDD didn't show up. If anyone knows how to help, please let me know!

In addition set SATA controller to AHCI to try install.

Check if you have an EFI BIOS, by looking for EFI Boot Disk in BIOS Boot Order to remove it.

If these fail wipe the HD using Diskpart Clean Command

Thanks, I'll try those out after work tomorrow.

So, I checked the SATA connections, and found they were wrong. I fixed that part, but now there appears to be more problems.

The HD is still not showing up in the regular BIOS, but if I go to the boot menu, it appears first in the boot order. Right now, if I don't boot through the bot menu, I get the error BOOTMGR is missing. if I go through the boot menu and select the optical drive with Windows 7 OEM in it, I can boot correctly.

The HD now appears in the installation, but there is a problem as soon as I start the actual installation, during the first "copying files" part.

"Windows Setup could not reinitialize the deployment engine. To install Windows, restart the installation."

There is also this bad sounding whirring/ keening noise that I think is coming from my HD. Could this indicate a hardware problem with the HD?

All advice is greatly appreciated. Thank you.

What do you mean the SATA connections "were wrong?" Explain.

If your HD is not showing up under storage device listings in BIOS then it's a problem no matter that it's listed in Boot order. Check the cables and connection, use SeaTools for DOS | Seagate recommended by Samsung Support to burn to CD to test HD with extended scan.

Do you have another HDD you can connect in place of your current primary? If so, power down, install the other hdd, clear the CMOS, enter BIOS, set Run Failsafe defaults, set hdd to run as AHCI, hit F10 then Y then enter. Go into the BIOS again and see if your drive is still there. If it is, your Samsung is bad, if it's not, well, just let us know the results.

The SATA connections were to the 2 and 3 ports, I changed the connection so the HDD is in port 1 and the optical is in port 0.

I'll run SeaTools tonight or tomorrow. Thanks.

I don't have another HDD to connect instead of my primary one. But thanks for the suggestion.