Solved BIOS will recognize SATA HDD but Windows 7 installer will not :/

I had two hdd's in RAID0 (WD 1600YD I think were the models), and one of them failed--click of death, BSOD, failed dskchk, etc.

I took out the bad drive and kept the good drive in the machine. (Everything was backed up to my external once the clicking started.) BIOS recognizes it, and when booting from an older IDE drive, windows recognizes it as well. It passed the disk check and everything. But when I try to install Windows 7, the WD drive won't show up on the list of places to install Windows. I got the drivers from WD's site, got the drivers from inside windows, but they aren't "signed" according to the Windows installer, and I can't use them. I tried the drive in another older machine and have the same problem.

I tried switching SATA ports, tried switching SATA cables, tried switching BIOS SATA settings from RAID to AHCI to AHCI>IDE, to Native IDE, etc. No matter what I try, I can't get the Windows 7 64 bit installer to recognize the drive.

I've read that you can change settings on specific SATA ports, but I can't find that option in BIOS. I am going to try messing around on the drive from inside windows with an older drive that has an OS installed, but I'm totally clueless here. Maybe there is some setting in BIOS that I'm missing? Another annoying thing is the Windows installation takes ages to load each screen, so every time I tried somethign different, I hve to wait 20+ minutes to the problem screen. I spent all of yesterday messing with this and I'm pretty horrible w/ this kind of troubleshooting.

Your post sounds like you trying to install to a old 32 bit P4.
Set BIOS to AHCI, & try installing a 32 bit OS.


For better help with problems, Can you post your specs.
http://www.sevenforums.com/general-discussion/22550-filling-out-system-specs.html
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/180324-system-info-see-your-system-specs.html

http://www.sevenforums.com/hardware-devices/6936-dont-know-what-hardware-you-have.html
http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/176785-vistaforums-sysinfo-tool.html

It's a triple core AMD w/ 6 GB RAM, and it was running Windows 7 64 bit before the other drive quit.

The motherboard is a Biostar A770E3 with BIOS version 08.00.14

If you need any more specific specs, I can throw an old hdd with an OS in there to use that tool you linked.

Will the HD Drive show in diskpart?
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/119713-diskpart-pc-startup.html

theog said:

For better help with problems, Can you post your specs.
http://www.sevenforums.com/general-discussion/22550-filling-out-system-specs.html
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/180324-system-info-see-your-system-specs.html

http://www.sevenforums.com/hardware-devices/6936-dont-know-what-hardware-you-have.html
VistaForums SysInfo Tool - Vista Forums

Click to expand...

I searched for the drive at the command prompt and it returned: "The device is not ready."

I'm trying to figure out Dispart now, and I'll update ASAP

EDIT: Yes, when I use the "list disk" command, the drive shows up on diskpart.

Try Cleaning the HD Drive, using the CLEAN command (no need to use CLEAN ALL) in Step One in this tutorial:
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/91339-ssd-hdd-optimize-windows-reinstallation.html
Do not partition or format.
(As the hardware is unknown)
Than clean install with the OEM manufacturer's Recovery Disk.
or
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/174907-clean-install-factory-coa-activation-key.html
or
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/31402-clean-install-upgrade-windows-7-version.html?ltr=C
or
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/1649-clean-install-windows-7-a.html?ltr=C
or
How to install Windows 64 bit on a uEFI BIOS:
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorial...e-firmware-interface-install-windows-7-a.html

theog said:

For better help with problems, Can you post your specs.
http://www.sevenforums.com/general-discussion/22550-filling-out-system-specs.html
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/180324-system-info-see-your-system-specs.html

http://www.sevenforums.com/hardware-devices/6936-dont-know-what-hardware-you-have.html
VistaForums SysInfo Tool - Vista Forums

Click to expand...

I had this problem once when I tried reusing a drive that previously had Linux on it. I ran the clean all command in DISKPART and that solved the issue.

What you have happening is correct - Windows should NOT touch that drive as it is marked as part of a stripe set or striped volume. As DeaconFrost pointed out, you need to prep the drive as a single/stand-alone device, not a striped volume. Do that and all will be fine.

Regards,
GEWB

I repped all 3 of you, and I will rep theog again when it lets me. Thank you very much for taking the time to help me. I used the "clean all" command, then made the primary partition, then formatted the drive from another drive's OS, then installed Windows 7 w/o a hitch.

Awesome....glad to hear!

Awesome -

Regards,
GEWB

I fixed my SATA issue by doing the following.

Go to repair and select command prompt enter the following


Diskpart
Select Disk N
In the above command N should be the disk number of the disk you are going to wipe.
Clean
Create Partition Primary
Assign
Exit
Now type the following command where X is the drive letter assigned to the new partition using the Assign command above:
Format X: /p:1 /v:CleanDisk /y