Correct SATA Drivers for hard disk controller?

[pauli]

Hi, my issues are two-fold.

After asking the guys at the shop who put my computer together to partition the hard drive, they must've forgotten.

I'm a full-time student heading toward a level 6 diploma in ICT, just started learning diskpart, etc. So it's good practice for me to make right what they didn't do.

Have read many forums trying to work out what to do because I can only shrink this Western Digital (WD5000AAKS) 500GB to half it's size (when what I really want is Windows 7 on C drive at only 50GB's).

Have tried a custom install but it asks me for SATA drivers which I cannot for the life of me find to download.

Any help is very much appreciated.

Pauli

P.S: The second part of the problem is RAM related, should I fix that first before doing the fresh install, or? I purchased 4GB of RAM but right clicking computer properties shows Installed memory (RAM): 2.00 GB. Right-clicking on my-PC and choosing properties does show 2 yellow warnings with exclamation marks. The first one is PCI Simple Communications Controller but clicking the update driver part comes back with "Windows was unable to install your..." Windows could not find driver software for your device. It doesn't have any driver provider details (Unkown) so not sure how to go about fixing that?
And the second exclamation mark says Unkown Device (could that be the missing RAM?)

 

[dajogejr]

1. What kind of motherboard do you have? You'll have to go to their site and get the SATA/RAID drivers for your board.
2. 32 or 64 bit? 32 bit will only recognize up to 3.0 or 3.5 GB of RAM.

 

[pauli]

1. Asus (P7H55-M Pro)
2. 64 bit

Kool, thank you dajogejr, I'll head to an Asus website to look for drivers there.
Any further advice?

 

[dajogejr]

How many hard drives total? Just one?
Look at the type/speed of memory...does it match? 64 Bit should show all the memory.
Are you looking at the memory capacity in BIOS, Windows Information (properties) or the task manager?
Do you have onboard video? In BIOS it could be sharing system RAM for the video...

 

[pauli]

Phew, finally found the correct driver to download. Do I need to unzip it, then save to a USB stick, or can it remain zipped up?

To see the RAM, I right-clicked on 'Computer' from the 'Start' button and then 'Properties'.

Yes, it's onboard video I think.

Sorry, I'm not at all familiar with BIOS (heading to the manual to read all about it now...)

 

[dajogejr]

You'll have to make yourself comfortable with the BIOS...good learning.
If your motherboard supports booting off USB, it might read the SATA/RAID drivers from a flash drive.
If not, it's back to good ol Floppy Drive.
However, if your computer only has one hard drive...and when going to install 7 from the DVD...does it see the hard drive? (Sorry, I'm not clear on that one)

 

[pauli]

This is great, will go back to class after the holidays way more clued-up.
Thanks for your direction djaogejr!
Yep, the manual says it can update the BIOS from a flash drive, no problem.
Yes, I've had to abort the custom install because of not having correct drivers. And when it installs I can choose between the partitions.
Hey, here's a thought, not sure if possible but can I choose one of the smaller partitions I made after shrinking the original drive settings just before, then after doing that, delete the 250GB drive where the original Windows 7 is then re-configure?

Ultimately I'd like 50GB for Windows 7 and VMware, then the remaining Gigs left to partition as I please

 

[pauli]

For the sake of this thread (possibly) helping others who also search for this stuff later as well, I didn't actually need to search/download the driver.

Ultimately my mission was to partition that one drive which the people who made my computer did so Windows 7 could reside in a smaller amount of space (in C drive), while the virtual environment would operate multiple OS and test spaces in the other partitions; hopefully leaving the base OS (in C drive) relatively free from accumulating a whole lot of extra files over time.

So, when you're unsatisfied with the way the people who built your computer set it up on just the one drive, here's what I just did:
(Disclaimer: I'm new to all of this and not sure if this is the best way to go around it, but it's how I eventually got around my problem)

1. Right-click on 'Computer' from the 'Start' pearl to click on 'Manage'.

2. Click 'Disk Management' (found under 'Storage'), then right-click on C drive to click on 'Shrink Volume...'

3. Shrink it to half it's size (default).

4. Right click on the Unallocated partition to format, choose 'New Simple Volume...'

5. Fly through the wizard then re-install Windows 7 choosing the custom option and putting the new Windows 7 install on the newly formatted drive.

6. Next I just removed/cleaned C drive, and created it again at only 50GB's (could have made it smaller but didn't), then re-installed Windows 7 again on new (smaller) C drive.

7. Okay, off to install VMware on the new (larger) partition now... Hope this helped someone else.
If not, please reply with anything/everything done wrong; I'm really open to criticism for the sake of getting much better at this.

Cheers : )