Drive recognized in bios, not in Windows

[dwhee]

I am running Windows Vista. I just got a Samsung 128gb SSD, installed it, and I can't get it to show up in the installation wizard that came with the drive. When I boot it appears in the list of drives in the bios, but it doesn't show up under My Computer or Computer Management. Anyone know something I might try to get this thing working?

EDIT: The SSD actually does show up in Disk Management. When I click "New Simple Volume" and go through the wizard it says "The operation could not be completed because the disk is not initialized."

EDIT2: Had to click the box to the right to initialize. Pretty sure it's formatting now.

 

[dwhee]

Ok, so I'm still having trouble with this.

I thought the disk was formatted, and I was able to run a couple games off of it, but as soon as I restarted by PC it stopped being recognized, and still wasn't recognized by the software that came with the drive. Now it recognizes it as a "New Volume" formatted with FAT32 and only 256 MB. I can't initialize it again, and when I format it it treats it like a 256 mb disk.

I was planning on installing Windows on the drive, but if I can't get it behaving normally first I don't know.

 

[WyomingKnott]

Before you can re-initialize it, you have to delete the FAT32 partition. Disk Mangler won't let you reinit a drive with any partitions on it.

While the install process will offer to repartition and reformat the drive for you, if the drive is acting flaky you may not want to trust it.

 

[dwhee]

I deleted the volume, but it still detects 256mb as the maximum size of the drive. And it still won't let me reinitialize the disk.

 

[WyomingKnott]

?? Can you try it in another machine? Is it possibly a bad drive? Or might it require that the port controller be set to AHCI mode? I don't know for sure.

 

[dwhee]

I've heard "AHCI mode" thrown around a lot in other discussions. I'll give it a shot. The drive is brand new, so I'm giving it the benefit of the doubt at this point, but I'll try it on another machine if I'm able.

 

[dwhee]

I couldn't find anything about AHCI in my BIOS setup screen. Still not sure what it is or if it would help.

However, I rebooted and now the SSD can be formatted again. I still have 0 confidence that it will stay that way. Anyone have any ideas? AHCI seems like more of a performance enhancer from what I've seen and I don't even know if my mobo supports it (ASUS P5D).