Windows 7 is not seeing my harddrive

[imaderp]

I've spent the last 7 hours trying to figure out how to get my OS (windows 7 Home Premium) to install on my new computer i had just pieced together. Whenever i go to install it doesn't see the hard drive, when i checked the mobo manual it just said to use raid as my OnChip sata setup but to configure the drives to work the mobo will only allow if i had multiple hard drives. I also cannot find any guides to running it with ither of the two modes (ide, ahci) the driver disk dose have a ahci mode but when set up in ahci it dose not sence the hdd or cd/dvd drive.
mobo-ga-990fxa-ud3
ive also looked online and cannot find any ide drivers that will make windows see my hdd.

 

[Golden]

Hi,

So during installation, there is no HDD detected at all? Do you see the image as shown in Step 7 here:

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/1649-clean-install-windows-7-a.html

Please check to see that the power and SATA cables are properly connected to both the motherboard and the HDD.

Post back if you need more help.

Regards,
Golden

 

[imaderp]

Hi,

So during installation, there is no HDD detected at all? Do you see the image as shown in Step 7 here:

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/1649-clean-install-windows-7-a.html

Please check to see that the power and SATA cables are properly connected to both the motherboards and the HDD.

Post back if you need more help.

Regards,
Golden

no the hard drive doesn't show up there and any driver i try doesn't work either

 

[Golden]

Hi,

So, to confirm : that box is completely blank?

Check all your connections between the motherboard and HDD, and then also check to see that the HDD is detected in the BIOS.

Regards,
Golden

 

[imaderp]

it shows up completely blank and the hdd is connected. it also shows up in bios when in ide mode, but when i swap it to ahci mode (a mode that there is a driver for) neither my cd/dvd drive nor hdd show up.

 

[Golden]

Hi,

OK using IDE in the BIOS, boot with your Windows 7 DVD, and at the language screen, hold SHIFT+F10 to enter a cmd window. At the prompt, type this:

diskpart <enter>
list disk <enter>

What is listed?

Repeat this using the AHCI mode in the BIOS - what is listed?
Regards,
Golden

 

[imaderp]

IDE
disk### Status Size Free Dyn Gpt
-------- -------------- ------- ------- --- ---
disk 0 online 931 gb 0 b

ahci couldn't see the dvd drive and thus couldn't even boot >.>

 

[Golden]

Hi,

Well, under IDE the disk is recognised, so I'm suprised it isn't available for installation. Do you have other HDD's or external USB drives plugged in to the PC when you try to install? If so, detach them, and then attempt the install.

Regards,
Golden

 

[imaderp]

no hardware that isnt needed is plugged in

 

[essenbe]

I just looked here. I want to be sure I understand. When bios is set to AHCI mode, diskpart cannot see the drive? is that right. It should. The installation DVD has AHCI drivers on it. It can install them itself. Also, try to hook the hard drive up to disk 0 (1 on some boards). Also, I have never had one, but I understand that some brands of CD/DVD drives have trouble with ahci mode.

 

[imaderp]

I just looked here. I want to be sure I understand. When bios is set to AHCI mode, diskpart cannot see the drive? is that right. It should. The installation DVD has AHCI drivers on it. It can install them itself. Also, try to hook the hard drive up to disk 0 (1 on some boards). Also, I have never had one, but I understand that some brands of CD/DVD drives have trouble with ahci mode.

the problem is that when set to AHCI mode nothing is showing up.
the installation disk has a AHCI driver just impossible to get the disk to boot when it cant see the optical drive.

 

[essenbe]

I honestly have never heard of that happening. But, you can install in IDE mode and then change to ahci mode after the installation. The OS will load, ahci drivers during the change. Just follow the tutorial, it is quite easy and I have used it several times and it works quite well. Once you do that, you can change back with no problem if it does not work.

Another suggestion, if you would like to try it. Set bios to IDE mode. At the 1st screen don't select your language, hold down Shift key and press F10, it will give you a command prompt. If it is a used disk, follow the tutorial to Optimize a hard drive for rinstallation. The 'clean all' command will take a 1TB drive 6-8 hours to complete, which is best, or you can use the 'clean' command which just takes a few seconds. If it is a new hard drive you don't need to run either command, just start with the create partition primary. create the partition, format it and mark it as Active. then exit twice and cancel the installation, Then change to ahci mode and see if it seesthe drive then, if not follow the tutorial above and install in IDE mode thren try to change to ahci. You will onlyhave 1 hard drive connected, so it will be select disk 0. I showed an example with several hard drives installed so you would know what it looks like. Just press enter after each command and wait for the response from the cmd prompt.

 

[imaderp]

I honestly have never heard of that happening. But, you can install in IDE mode and then change to ahci mode after the installation. The OS will load, ahci drivers during the change. Just follow the tutorial, it is quite easy and I have used it several times and it works quite well. Once you do that, you can change back with no problem if it does not work.

the problem is that the mobo dosen't have a driver for ide mode (nor have i been successful in finding one online to transfer via usb) and in ahci it dosen't see any of my sata slots.

I'm starting to consider the possibility that the mobo is damaged/bad (because the package had some damage when i got it)

but i will still try you 2nd idea

 

[essenbe]

I tend to agree with you. AHCI is simply a sata configuration. Your mobo should be able to use it without downloading or installing drivers. I have never had a mobo that could not 'see' devices hooked up to the sata ports in AHCI mode. That is a function of the motherboard. The windows installation disk has AHCI drivers in it. During the install it will install them if the bios is in AHCI mode. But first, the installation disk must be able to see the devices. That is a function of the motherboard. Raid is the only sata configuration I know of that will usually need drivers added before the install process, but still the motherboard bios has to enable the installer to see the devices.

 

[imaderp]

i opened up my old computer witch just happened to break right after i finished transferring all my data to a usb, i was just gonna scavenge it for spare parts anyway and i noticed that there was signs that its mobo and vid card would be bad then i looked at the hard drive, sata.
gonna try a raid setup according to the manual(only thing manual tells you how to since its so complicated with this one) if it doesn't work then i know for sure that its broken.

 

[essenbe]

I've never set up raid before (although, I've been tempted to and probably will at some point) so, I won't be able to help much there. But, going back to your previous problem. Your motherboard should accept AHCI mode naturally. The motherboard drivers, such as chipset, USB 3.0 ect. are installed once the OS is installed. I just can't see how it is a drver issue.

 

[imaderp]

ive got it working for now off raid,I have no idea why it didn't work but its good for me right now (long as i can go back to daily life and not a computer so weak i cant get anything done)
thanks for the help, though i'm sure ill have problems in the future.
-imaderp-

 

[essenbe]

We're glad it is working for you. Good job. If you have any problems in the future, you know how to find us. we'll be right here and we never close.

 

[DeaconFrost]

I wouldn't want to be running RAID with a single drive. No reason for it, and it would make me nervous about any type of data issues later on.

That being said, AHCI shouldn't need any drivers for Windows 7. I haven't seen this dicussed, but does your board have multiple sets of SATA ports or controllers? It's possible that their settings changed when changing the primary to AHCI. If that was me, I would have bought a new board or optical drive, rather than run as RAID. Did you try contacting Gigabyte for the issue? What model optical drive do you have?

 

[hippytitimus]

Gigabyte mobo ide dvd/hdd and windows 7 sorted

Having read a lot of comments about the problem of Gigabyte mobos giving the error of windows 7 cant find your CD/DVD I decided to try and sort this out for myself. The machine is an old emachine case with original DVD and HDDs fitted and a gigabyte mobo AMD 2 core cpu with 2gb ram, not the most up to date but great for the odd bit of problem solving. As a lot have said, you do need to check your bios settings if you are using IDE drives, on my mobo I set it to legacy IDE, at least I new it would find both my IDE DVD and IDE HDD, I really should have updated both but just wanted to see what would happen. Trying to install windows 7 got as far as looking at your system and then you get the dvd driver error. I then tried installing Win XP SP3, this installed without problem with both dvd and hdd working as they should, I then thought I would try doing a win 7 upgrade from a running xp desktop, this failed also giving errors. My next idea was to copy all the Win 7 disk to a USB stick and run the setup from xp desktop. This loaded and gave me the options of upgrade or complete install, I opted for complete, (it still puts all your xp windows in a "windows.old" dir), low and behold it installed perfectly onto my IDE HDD without the need of my DVD drive, once installed I check if my DVD was working ok ,and it was and changing bios settings after this seemed to make little difference. So I now have a machine running win 7 x64. One to remember for next time maybe.