I have found that it's best to disconnect all extra hard drives except the one you want to install Windows 7 on. It gets a little picky that way. Once you have it installed then you can reconnect the drives.
I hope this helps. BTW, I have my BIOS set to AHCI mode.
I did try to unhook my excess drives, that was the first thing I tried. No love
Sorry if this is a stupid question, but can I still run RAID1 if this setting is at AHCI?
Oh, I see what you're saying. Gotcha. Yeah, I'll try that.
Ok here's what I think is going on, in the Bios set the SATA controllers to native IDE not RAID or ACHI like other people have stated that should solve your issue.
You should be able to configure the controllers like SATA 0 & 1 to native IDE which will treat the drive like an IDE drive for OS to install and run then to set SATA 2 & 3 to RAID
I tried AHCI, and am having the same issue. One thing that I noticed that has me a bit puzzled, is that If I load just the GSATA driver, which my (potential) OS drive is NOT controlled by, it will give me the same problem error. Go figure. When I Disable by ICH10R raid controller, and turned my GSATA raid controller to IDE only, it would allow me to load the drivers, then tell me it was unable to partition the drive. I couldn't go on from there.
I tried to completely delete the partition, and format, but it did the same thing.
Why not disconnect the raid drives and do your install to the primary drive. Then hook up the raid and let Windows find it and prompt you for the drivers... Just a thought.
Can I do that? In previous version of Windows, you HAD to install raid drivers during OS install. I sort of assumed this was the same way.
I don't know why not, on the initial install to the single drive it won't require raid drivers. All you can do is give it a try.
Quote