Unable to see disk drives on win7 installation (not a driver issue)

[lullylewj]

Ok we all know when you get to a certain point with a win7 install it asks you where you want to install it. If you're using a SATA/AHCI drive usually it is required that you have the driver to hand on a disk or USB stick or something, which people tend to get stuck at which is why the subject is titled the way it is so people don't ignore this thinking it's just that again. Anyway -

My problem lies in the fact that even after I have selected the driver (100% it is definitely the correct driver) it still does not see the Hard drive when I hit refresh. It was baffling me so I checked some BIOS settings and sure enough there is a choice to switch the SATA mode from AHCI over to 'Native - IDE'. This didn't work, in this setting even the driver was not seen as compatible. So I am totally stumped. Everything tallies up correctly in BIOS and the drive is 100% healthy. I've been working on computers for years and this is the first thing that has baffled me.

Relevent information:-

Acer D1F - AD v1.0A Motherboard S/N: 22703214 (for when I was finding the correct driver)
The actual Computer Model is: Acer X1440
Attempting to install a fresh copy of Win7 64bit.

Anything you can suggest will hopefully get things moving.

Lewis

 

[geofelt]

A SSD should be installed on a sata port in AHCI mode. Otherwise, you lose trim support.
A windows 7 install dvd needs no additional drivers for your ssd install.
You may be asked if you want to format or erase the ssd; that is ok.
You should have no other drives attached during a clean install.

 

[lullylewj]

A SSD should be installed on a sata port in AHCI mode. Otherwise, you lose trim support.
A windows 7 install dvd needs no additional drivers for your ssd install.
You may be asked if you want to format or erase the ssd; that is ok.
You should have no other drives attached during a clean install.

Thanks for your reply. I have tried to install with BIOS set to both AHCI and native - IDE with no luck. Just to clarify it is just a standard WD HDD, not an SSD .

 

[geofelt]

Either ahci or ide should work.
AHCI is preferred because it includes some power options that the older ide mode does not.
Regardless, the windows 7 dvd will include the necessary drivers for any sata drive.
If you are selecting a driver, you are probably picking some incorrect option.
You should be looking at a clean install, and may be given an option on where to install it or to first format the drive.
You might first check in the bios to see if the drive is detected.
If it is not, that is the error to work on.
You need both a sata data cable and a sata power connection.
Check where the drive is connected. You will want one of the standard intel ports. If your connection is to an optional marvell 6gb port, then you will need a driver. Thinking about it, that is likely the error.
There is no advantage on using a hard drive on a 6gb connection, compared to a 3gb connection.

 

[lullylewj]

Hi all, thanks for the help but I figured it out. I had a chance to put the HDD into a working win 7 pc as an extra drive so that I could look at it from Windows.

I had a peak in 'Disk Management' You can find this by going :-

First just try typing 'disk management' in the search, down in your start button, failing that; follow the instructions below.

'Control Panel > system and security > administrative tools > computer management then open 'disk management' over in the left column.

I noticed the drive had somehow been setup as a 'dynamic disk' and had nothing beside it that would normally give you capacity and partition information.

Straight away I decided to change it to a basic drive by right clicking and choosing the option for it, this then showed its data information to the right. It was odd, showing 17GB allocated space with the other 483GB completely unused. I deleted the 17gig partition then proceeded with a full format (unchecking quick format, just in case).

This solved the problem entirely. I hope this serves to help anyone else with a similar problem. Again, thanks to all that replied with helpful suggestions .