Where's my hard drive?

gregrocker said:

It shouldn't be the driver needed if other IDE drives are showing there, but you can try unzipping the chipset drivers to a stick or CD and inserting the IDE controller driver at the Load Drivers link on same page where the HD doesn't show up during install.

Otherwise update your BIOS, or reset the CMOS, or try one of the other steps I gave earlier. Need some feedback before giving any more.

I'll try that - worth a shot. BIOS is fully up to date. I've been reluctant to play with the CMOS settings as they have changed quite a bit over the years. Also the DiamondMax20 works fine. I'll let you know.

SuccessSuccessSuccessSuccess

Thanks very much. I burnt the drivers to a CD and loaded the IDE driver during installation. My HD appeared for the first time and I managed to install Windows 7 on it. Surprisingly the VIA website reports (for the 8237A chip) “...Support for IDE, SATA and RAID are included in Windows 7. No driver updates are currently available.”
Now all I want to do is transfer as much as possible from my smaller IBM HD to this one so I don’t have to reset everything.
My first attempt at this was to move the Maxtor to the slave location and try to do an image. For some obscure reason, as a slave, it disappeared again. I think I’m going to put this down as a rogue HD but since it now works as a master I will leave that problem for another day.
So, leaving this as a master, what would be the most efficient way of copying the IBM image over???
Thanks everyone. I’ll sleep tonight.

You want to apply an image from the IBM HD to the Maxtor now? Or just copy data?

What imaging utility are you using? If you have their boot disk, boot it and apply the image stored on IBM to Maxtor. Or just clone the IBM directly to the Maxtor using cloning software.

To copy data, wipe the Maxtor then clean install Win7, then drag the files from IBM via explorer into Win7 User files or other storage locations. If you have ownership issues, install this shortcut to right click context menu to take ownership of any folder that blocks you: Take Ownership Shortcut

Wipe HD first to overwrite infected or corrupt code: SSD / HDD : Optimize for Windows Reinstallation
Tips for getting a perfect clean install based on hundreds done here: re-install windows 7

I was thinking that transferring an image would be the easiest way to preserve all programme and email settings and I would probably use an application like MaxBLAST to do it. Copying data is not the problem. This is all on the second drive and also backed up to NAS.

On reflection though the Maxtor is now performing so much better than the IBM that I will probably reinstall all the programmes I need and rebuild them as I go along. Will take longer but it is cleaner. Email account settings and pst files can be copied over as necessary. Have a bit of time on my hands now as we are snowed in. Oh to live in California...

Bare Foot Kid said:

"Oh to live in California... "



If you lived on the left coast you'd be getting flooded with rain for the last few days.

True, not to mention over 10 feet of snow in the mountains. :)