[H] Win 7 setup not recognizing drives
I've got several 250 GB Seagate drives that used to be in my HTPC RAID. They've been replaced by 1 TB drives so now I'm looking to use them elsewhere. I am trying to install Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit which I just purchased on one of those drives. The drive detects perfectly fine in BIOS, has no problems, but the Win 7 setup will not find it or show it as an option to install to. If I put another drive on that same exact connector/cable, it detects it. Is there something that the RAID adapter/software could have changed on the drive to cause this? When I migrated to the new RAID, I copied all the data from the old RAID to the new one which was running on a new controller. I then just disconnected all the old 250 GB drives and put them in storage. --- Brian Weeden Technical Advisor Secure World Foundation http://www.secureworldfoundation.org +1 (514) 466-2756 Canada +1 (202) 683-8534 US
Re: [H] Win 7 setup not recognizing drives
Hello Brian, You might want to check to see if there is no bad sectors between LBA 0 and 2048 on the drive. If the computer can detect the hard drive, but the OS install cannot this is usually what he problem is. Regards Tim Lider Sr. Data Recovery Specialist Advanced Data Solutions, LLC http://www.adv-data.com -Original Message- From: hardware-boun...@hardwaregroup.com [mailto:hardware- boun...@hardwaregroup.com] On Behalf Of Brian Weeden Sent: Tuesday, December 01, 2009 6:31 AM To: hwg Subject: [H] Win 7 setup not recognizing drives I've got several 250 GB Seagate drives that used to be in my HTPC RAID. They've been replaced by 1 TB drives so now I'm looking to use them elsewhere. I am trying to install Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit which I just purchased on one of those drives. The drive detects perfectly fine in BIOS, has no problems, but the Win 7 setup will not find it or show it as an option to install to. If I put another drive on that same exact connector/cable, it detects it. Is there something that the RAID adapter/software could have changed on the drive to cause this? When I migrated to the new RAID, I copied all the data from the old RAID to the new one which was running on a new controller. I then just disconnected all the old 250 GB drives and put them in storage. --- Brian Weeden Technical Advisor Secure World Foundation http://www.secureworldfoundation.org +1 (514) 466-2756 Canada +1 (202) 683-8534 US
Re: [H] Win 7 setup not recognizing drives
Thanks Tim - what's the easiest way to do this? Would Spinrite detect this sort of problem? --- Brian Weeden Technical Advisor Secure World Foundation http://www.secureworldfoundation.org +1 (514) 466-2756 Canada +1 (202) 683-8534 US On Tue, Dec 1, 2009 at 10:50 AM, Tim Lider timli...@adv-data.com wrote: Hello Brian, You might want to check to see if there is no bad sectors between LBA 0 and 2048 on the drive. If the computer can detect the hard drive, but the OS install cannot this is usually what he problem is. Regards Tim Lider Sr. Data Recovery Specialist Advanced Data Solutions, LLC http://www.adv-data.com -Original Message- From: hardware-boun...@hardwaregroup.com [mailto:hardware- boun...@hardwaregroup.com] On Behalf Of Brian Weeden Sent: Tuesday, December 01, 2009 6:31 AM To: hwg Subject: [H] Win 7 setup not recognizing drives I've got several 250 GB Seagate drives that used to be in my HTPC RAID. They've been replaced by 1 TB drives so now I'm looking to use them elsewhere. I am trying to install Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit which I just purchased on one of those drives. The drive detects perfectly fine in BIOS, has no problems, but the Win 7 setup will not find it or show it as an option to install to. If I put another drive on that same exact connector/cable, it detects it. Is there something that the RAID adapter/software could have changed on the drive to cause this? When I migrated to the new RAID, I copied all the data from the old RAID to the new one which was running on a new controller. I then just disconnected all the old 250 GB drives and put them in storage. --- Brian Weeden Technical Advisor Secure World Foundation http://www.secureworldfoundation.org +1 (514) 466-2756 Canada +1 (202) 683-8534 US
Re: [H] Win 7 setup not recognizing drives
Brian, Did you reformat (erase) these 250GB drives before you put them in storage? Or, do you mean you can not even get W7 to reformat these drives? That would be a pisser! As they were p/o a raid array, W7 may be seeing some special formatting in the initial sectors (by the raid controller) and by-passes the drive because the rest of the array is missing. Only thing I can think of. Recall talk before about different raid controllers doing different stuff to drives and making them hard to move/re-use to/on other raid controllers. Best, Duncan Brian Weeden wrote: I've got several 250 GB Seagate drives that used to be in my HTPC RAID. They've been replaced by 1 TB drives so now I'm looking to use them elsewhere. I am trying to install Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit which I just purchased on one of those drives. The drive detects perfectly fine in BIOS, has no problems, but the Win 7 setup will not find it or show it as an option to install to. If I put another drive on that same exact connector/cable, it detects it. Is there something that the RAID adapter/software could have changed on the drive to cause this? When I migrated to the new RAID, I copied all the data from the old RAID to the new one which was running on a new controller. I then just disconnected all the old 250 GB drives and put them in storage. --- Brian Weeden Technical Advisor Secure World Foundation http://www.secureworldfoundation.org +1 (514) 466-2756 Canada +1 (202) 683-8534 US
Re: [H] Win 7 setup not recognizing drives
I did not reformat them. I guess I should start there. I found one of the 250GB drives that worked, so I'm guessing it is probably an error along the lines of what Tim suggested. Once I'm done with the re-install, I'm going to get one of those cool SATA docks and go through and check and wipe all the drives just to make sure. --- Brian Weeden Technical Advisor Secure World Foundation http://www.secureworldfoundation.org +1 (514) 466-2756 Canada +1 (202) 683-8534 US On Tue, Dec 1, 2009 at 12:12 PM, DSinc dx7...@bellsouth.net wrote: Brian, Did you reformat (erase) these 250GB drives before you put them in storage? Or, do you mean you can not even get W7 to reformat these drives? That would be a pisser! As they were p/o a raid array, W7 may be seeing some special formatting in the initial sectors (by the raid controller) and by-passes the drive because the rest of the array is missing. Only thing I can think of. Recall talk before about different raid controllers doing different stuff to drives and making them hard to move/re-use to/on other raid controllers. Best, Duncan Brian Weeden wrote: I've got several 250 GB Seagate drives that used to be in my HTPC RAID. They've been replaced by 1 TB drives so now I'm looking to use them elsewhere. I am trying to install Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit which I just purchased on one of those drives. The drive detects perfectly fine in BIOS, has no problems, but the Win 7 setup will not find it or show it as an option to install to. If I put another drive on that same exact connector/cable, it detects it. Is there something that the RAID adapter/software could have changed on the drive to cause this? When I migrated to the new RAID, I copied all the data from the old RAID to the new one which was running on a new controller. I then just disconnected all the old 250 GB drives and put them in storage. --- Brian Weeden Technical Advisor Secure World Foundation http://www.secureworldfoundation.org +1 (514) 466-2756 Canada +1 (202) 683-8534 US
Re: [H] Win 7 setup not recognizing drives
I had something similar happen to me once with a drive I had been using for Linux installs, dual booting or some such. If I remember right, I had to use a Win PE or Linux disk to delete the partitions and reformat the thing, then the Windows installer could see it.. -- JRS stei...@pacbell.net Facts do not cease to exist just because they are ignored. - Original Message From: Brian Weeden brian.wee...@gmail.com To: hardware@hardwaregroup.com Sent: Tue, December 1, 2009 9:32:40 AM Subject: Re: [H] Win 7 setup not recognizing drives I did not reformat them. I guess I should start there. I found one of the 250GB drives that worked, so I'm guessing it is probably an error along the lines of what Tim suggested. Once I'm done with the re-install, I'm going to get one of those cool SATA docks and go through and check and wipe all the drives just to make sure. --- Brian Weeden Technical Advisor Secure World Foundation +1 (514) 466-2756 Canada +1 (202) 683-8534 US On Tue, Dec 1, 2009 at 12:12 PM, DSinc wrote: Brian, Did you reformat (erase) these 250GB drives before you put them in storage? Or, do you mean you can not even get W7 to reformat these drives? That would be a pisser! As they were p/o a raid array, W7 may be seeing some special formatting in the initial sectors (by the raid controller) and by-passes the drive because the rest of the array is missing. Only thing I can think of. Recall talk before about different raid controllers doing different stuff to drives and making them hard to move/re-use to/on other raid controllers. Best, Duncan Brian Weeden wrote: I've got several 250 GB Seagate drives that used to be in my HTPC RAID. They've been replaced by 1 TB drives so now I'm looking to use them elsewhere. I am trying to install Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit which I just purchased on one of those drives. The drive detects perfectly fine in BIOS, has no problems, but the Win 7 setup will not find it or show it as an option to install to. If I put another drive on that same exact connector/cable, it detects it. Is there something that the RAID adapter/software could have changed on the drive to cause this? When I migrated to the new RAID, I copied all the data from the old RAID to the new one which was running on a new controller. I then just disconnected all the old 250 GB drives and put them in storage. --- Brian Weeden Technical Advisor Secure World Foundation +1 (514) 466-2756 Canada +1 (202) 683-8534 US
Re: [H] Win 7 setup not recognizing drives
I tried to put the RTM of Win7 on an old drive that once had a working (bootable) WinME on it. (Single drive, standard PATA configuration.) There was something about the mix of old and new bootloaders that caused me all sorts of trouble. IIRC it would still try to boot Win-ME, but could not... I WIPED the old drive and everything went well after that. Rick Glazier From: JRS I had something similar happen to me once with a drive I had been using for Linux installs, dual booting or some such. If I remember right, I had to use a Win PE or Linux disk to delete the partitions and reformat the thing, then the Windows installer could see it.. From: Brian Weeden I did not reformat them. I guess I should start there. I found one of the 250GB drives that worked, so I'm guessing it is probably an error along the lines of what Tim suggested. Once I'm done with the re-install, I'm going to get one of those cool SATA docks and go through and check and wipe all the drives just to make sure.