Hard drive wont show up

Evening, like title says my harddrive wont show up when I'm installing windows 7. I followed the instructions up to the select a harddrive/partition but it wont show and says that I need an installation media for it to be read.

I assume this would be where I need a RAID file from my usb but where would I be able to find/download one from?

Laptop in question is a
Satelite L555-S7916
3 gb RAM
has a 500gb WD Scorpio Blue

Is there anything in particular I need to know or should put down to hep?
I'm at a total lost and dont want to do anything dangerous to my laptop.

Any help would be appreciated, thanks in advance.

is the drive formated ? and if so is it formated in ( ntfs ) ?
thats the first thing that comes to mind .
you can also try (diskpart)
hold (shift + F10) at the screen before the install screen then type
diskpart
then type
list disk
then type
select disk (the disk thats not being seen)
then type
create partition primary

that should let windows see the drive now..
hope that helps ....

scrooge

Well I tired doing what the stuff in the first tutorial you listed said but command prompt is telling me no disk is selected at all when I type in diskpart and then list disk.

as for the second tutorial, I'm up to step 8, where you need RAID drivers but I dont have any.

And no my harddrive isnt formatted.

after list disk you have to type select disk and the number next to the drive you want like this select disk 0 or select disk 1 and so on.

scrooge

Win7 installer has all SATA drivers so the issue is likely lack of formatting as Scrooge is saying, or incorrect BIOS settings.

Is the HD seen in BIOS setup? What is the SATA controller setting? Try AHCI first, then IDE mode if necessary.

@ Scrooge: Its still saying disk not found when i type in that command.

@ greg: I dont see HDD but does FDD mean anything similar? And SATA is in AHCI mode right now.

Floppy Disk Drive? The laptop specs don't show one ships with it.

If your HD doesn't show up where it should register in BIOS setup, then it may need to be reinstalled.

Plugs? this doesnt mean I'll have to open up my laptop does it?

And reinstalled? as in make sure the HD snugs right into the pins?