W7 Not recognising Seagate SATA

Hi guys,

I just migrated my brand new PC from Vista to W7 RC.

The problem is my Seagate 1TB 3.6" SATA-II 7200rpm 32NB Cache NCQ HDD can't be seen in Windows Explorer at all! It was fine in Vista a few minutes ago so I know its definitely working because I could see it when I went to reformat my C drive in the windows 7 setup screen. I checked again just then to be sure I didnt accidently reformat the Seagate (Thank goodness). I went into device manager and I saw some really strange things. Please take a look at the screenshot below:

http://img44.imageshack.us/img44/2116/86830289.jpg

As you can notice on the far left, on the system restore page, that W7 is seeing my Hard drive, and giving it some really weird name, so its definitely there. Now in the middle what you can see is my Raptor C drive. Then on the right is the mysterious Seagate that has no drive letter assigned to it. Windows updates have been installed since W7 installation, failing to show any sign of my 'D' drive/ storage drive in windows explorer. Running on i7 with an ASUS mobo. Fresh installation of W7 on raptor.

Hopefully this issue can be resolved in a few hours or its Vista here I come!

Many Thanks in advance.

What you're seeing on the left is the "long name" that the operating system normally assigns to a device. Windows usually assigns an alias (i.e., drive d) and shows that to you instead to make things easier.

You didn't by any chance have some sort of disk encryption enabled in Vista?

Was the disk used as a storage destination by a backup utility?

For some reason, Windows 7 isn't recognizing the file system on the disk. There are a number of reasons why that can happen...none of them particularly desirable. If you have a backup of the data on the drive the easiest thing is to here is to use Disk Manager to wipe the partition(s) on the drive and create and format new one(s).

Otherwise, you'll have to take it back to the Vista where it was working (and make sure it still works). If any encryption was applied to any of the partitions on the disk, remove it. If the disk was not encrypted you can run CHKDSK (without the /f switch) against it and see if that reports any errors.

If CHKDSK reports any errors, run it again with the /f switch.

My guess is the partition table contains a value that doesn't bother Vista but for some reason is confusing Windows 7.

If the Vista installation where the disk used to work is still available you might also look at event viewer and see if there are any messages relevant to the disk subsystem.

Sorry, m8 - I just saw this thread on account of your reply - else I would have told you that. One look at your pics and I saw the missing drive letter and knew what was going on.

At least ya figured it out...marking this solved.