Fresh Win7 install and previously full drives now 'unallocated'

[tipsydog]

Hi. I've done a few searches for my situation but any solutions seem to involve reformatting drives, which I cant do.

My system consisted of a C-drive on ssd and 2 other sata discs partitioned to give me drives D, E, F, K and V. I replaced my ssd with a larger ssd, and I in my innocence thought all I had to do was a new install of Win 7 (Home Premium 64b) on it and all would be hunky-dory (I had to do a new install rather than restore an image for reasons I wont go into now)

From those of you in the know, I sense tuts and rolling eyes!! My bios sees the discs for what they are (and sata in the bios is set to AHCI), but windows Disc Management sees one large unallocated drive. I'm unable to give them drive letters or check ownership as they're not visible in Windows Explorer.

As I already mentioned I cant do anything that will risk loosing information already on my sata drives, so how can I make them visible to Windows once again, with all their partitions and drive letters as they were previously???....please tell me I can

 

[ignatzatsonic]

Post a screen shot of what you can see in Windows Disk Management.

You say "one unallocated drive", but you also earlier say "2 other sata discs".

Are these purely data drives that have no traces of an OS on them?

How exactly are you trying to give them drive letters?

Do you have any other PC to which these drives can be temporarily attached to confirm they can be seen and are not outright defective?

 

[tipsydog]

Thanks for the reply. In work at present but will respond with screenshot as soon as I'm home.

 

[AddRAM]

Please tell me your other drives were unplugged when you installed Windows 7 ??????

All you then had to do was hook them back up and windows would have installed the drivers and given each partition or drive a letter, which you then change to your liking in Disk Management.

When you get home post the shot of Disk Management.

 

[tipsydog]

No they were plugged up.....oops, have I really messed up and lost them or is it just a matter of going back and installing Win 7 again on the ssd with the other disks unplugged??? If that's what I've got to do and all my data is good, although a pain its a small price to pay.

 

[ignatzatsonic]

No they were plugged up.....oops, have I really messed up and lost them or is it just a matter of going back and installing Win 7 again on the ssd with the other disks unplugged??? If that's what I've got to do and all my data is good, although a pain its a small price to pay.

Without any screen shots and no diagnostic report on the hard drives, it's hard to say what's wrong.

Installing Windows on a drive with other drives connected is begging for trouble and may be at the root of your issues.

A Windows installation normally takes less than an hour, plus whatever you need for updates and basic configuration. I'd probably start over with ONLY 1 drive connected, unless you want to post screen shots and try to diagnose that drive separately. Even if you get the drive recognized, you may discover that installing with other drives connected has caused some funky and unwanted partitioning.

Kinda your choice. I'd start over. If the unrecognized drives have been wiped or are defective in some way, re-installing Windows isn't going to further foul things up if they are now disconnected. As it is now, we have no way of knowing if your data is still good or not.

 

[tipsydog]

Various screenshots as you can see. This is what I get when I first select Disk Management. Disk 0 is my new ssd with the os, and Disk 1 is the other drive windows sees.



...and when I cancel that option, I see just one disk the combined size of the 2 disks that are actually there, aside from my C drive ssd.



In reality there are 2 discrete sata disks present each 950GB. They contain only data, with no other OS on them, and they were both working properly before I changed the original c drive ssd for a larger new ssd and went through the Win 7 installation on this, with both sata disks still plugged



When I right click/properties on Disk 1 I get the info below





Thanks guys for your help with this.

 

[ignatzatsonic]

Hmmm..........last pic says "Array0 properties".

Were these 2 discrete drives in a RAID setup?

And you reinstalled Windows when they were still in a RAID config, with both connected?

If so, I know nothing about RAID and can't help.

I have no idea if your data is there or not.

 

[tipsydog]

Yes thats correct, they came as 2 discrete drives in a Raid setup. When the pc was ordered some years ago I had the option of this, or setup to be a Raid main and backup.

 

[Megahertz07]

Did you changed SATA=RAID to SATA=AHCI previously installing Win 7 on the new SSD?
If you did, you may have ruined a RAID 0 array. As you still see only one drive on windows, there is a chance you can fix it.
Don't try to do anything on the drive.
On BIOS, set SATA back to RAID, save and reboot.

 

[tipsydog]

I had noted some of the bios settings and for the old ssd SATA=AHCI, so its set the same with the new one.

I'll try as AddRAM suggested, and reinstall win 7 on the new ssd, but this time do it with the sata drives detached, then introduce them when windows is installed - thats my evening sorted!

 

[Megahertz07]

As you had two drives that where working as one, you had a RAID 0 array. Reinstalling windows wont bring the array back. You MUST set SATA=RAID or you're going to ruin your array (if you haven't already done).
I know what I'm saying as I also have a RAID 0 and I once ruined my array when I updated my BIOS and SATA was set by default to AHCI

 

[AddRAM]

You must setup your Raid array again to get it back like it was.

Then, if you don`t want to use Raid anymore, backup your data, then format the storage drive/s and set the sata mode to AHCI in the bios.

No reason to reinstall windows again.