Windows 7 setup does not recognize my hard drives!

I have been trying to install a copy of an x86 version of Windows 7 Ultimate for weeks. For some reason when I first installed it It did not recognize my hard drives. I was ok with the upgrade at first (from Windows Vista Ultimate) but along with the disk space it is taking up from windows.old, I want a clean copy. When I go in the setup, click install, and go to the Custom Install tab, no hard drives or partitions show up. I have tried installing drivers from the Western Digital site, to no avail.

My Specs:

Two 80gb Wd800JD Western Digital Caviar blue's.
Asus A8N SLI Deluxe mobo
Athlon dual core 4800
Nvidia Geforce 8800GTX

The ultimate question I am trying to get answered is how do I get a my hard drives to show up on the setup and finally get to my destination of having one partition, with my copy of Windows 7 Ultimate on it?

This is the information of the hard drives and where I tried to download the drivers to allow the installation to work: WD Support > Installation > SATA & SAS > WD Caviar SE / SE16 (SATA I)

I tried to load the drivers at the installation and apparently they were not the correct ones, although the most recent ones I could find were for WinXP.

I am getting frustrated with Windows 7! I also have a problem where I am not sure If my video card is working properly or not, but that is another issue that I have posted on that the advice I received did not work..

Thank you for your time in reading this. I appreciate any input to my problems.

Are you doing a RAID install?

Are you booting from the DVD?

If you can't get it to work, unplug one of the drives to see if it will work on one. I know there are sometimes problems if you put 2 clean drives in the system, but it sounds like you have already written to at least one.

Thank you for the quick responses!

Yes, I am booting from DVD, and I have tried to install the RAID drivers because no partitions or anything show up in the Windows7 setup screen. Thats why I went hunting for the correct RAID drivers but everyone I tried to load in there did not work.

These are not clean hard drives. I had Windows Vista Ultimate on them, then I had to upgrade to 7 because I could not get the clean install to work. So they are most cluttered. I would be happy If I could just wipe them both clean, delete partitions, etc. Then make one partition with just Windows 7 on it. Bottom line - I want everything gone! Save Nothing! Fresh Copy!

I will check the BIOS when I get home later this afternoon.

Thank you all for the help.

When you are prompted to add drivers for sata controllers try the 32 bit or 64 bit of that, depending if you are running 32 or 64. Those are the drivers for the controller running on that motherboard.

Silicon Image - Support | Search Results

Or you can try one of the various drivers listed here

Microsoft Update Catalog

The second link is Microsofts data base of sata controller drivers for your motherboard. It may take many trys but the right driver is there, you just have to find it and it can be a pain doing so.

gregrocker said:

Why do you want RAID? Is that the legacy setup of your mobo?

RAID is old technology completely redundant now with drive imaging built into Win7.

Every RAID issue here is a problem with Win7 install.

Can you get out of the RAID in BIOS then try your install? Set SATA controller to IHCI.

Also, on the downloads page in your WD Caviar link is Data Lifeguard dos CD. Burn to CD and run the full diagnostics on both HD, then use Full zeroing to clean your drives best.

Boot from installer and format when you get that RAID crap out.

Most older motherboards do not offer that feature. I have several sata motherboards that do not offer IDE Mode. The silicon image 3114 sata controller is an older sata controller and is not supported during the windows 7 installation, at least on the boards I have tried. Drivers are also a pain to find because support ceased with Vista, but the drivers you download for vista do not work in windows 7. I have had to get them from Microsofts catalog.

Also he is transposing the term raid for sata. What he meant to say was he was trying to install the sata driver because the installation process is not seeing any drives and often the controllers raid and sata driver are the same.

Got it. Shouldn't it prompt for those SATA drivers, or could it be another issue with HD's not detected during install?

Ok, as far as trying to install those Silicon Image drivers, Windows setup still did not recognize my hardware. However, I do have some new information that may or may not be useful:

In the bios the first through fourth SATA master is set to none, there are only two options when you try to change it, that is none and auto, I did not see anything about IHCI. Primary IDE Master and Slave are also set to none.

Under the Onboard Config tab of my bios there is an option labeled Silicon SATA that is enabled, and when the computer fires up I caught this bit of info:
SIL 3114 BIOS VERSION 5.1.39

I don't know if this is any help to my conundrum. The search continues...

You all have been magnificent help so far, and thank you for your time.

Microsoft is still of no help. I can not get my problems solved. I would rather downgrade to Vista if I cannot get this to work. I was informed on another topic that my motherboard was "too old" for Windows 7 (my mobo is an asus a8n sli-deluxe). I want to just go back to vista. I still have my windows.old folder as I could not format in the first place. Anyone have any ideas to point me in the right direction? I tried following a sticky on this site for formatting a drive and I still could not get it to work, and I am running out of patience with Microsoft's customer support, and their products.

Love,

A crabby Microsoft product owner.