hard drive won't show up in windows

[Rob_63]

I have two identical WD 2.5" 500 Gb Black hard drives and one refuses to show up when I attempt to install windows 7 on it.

Both of the hard drives will show up in the Bios, however one will not appear when I get to the screen to select a drive when installing windows 7 (Ult. 64 bit). However it will show up if I install windows on another drive. I have experienced this with 3 different MB's (two 775 and an 1156)

I had both of these drives running in the 1156 board in a raid 0 configuration initially, I have reformatted both of them, used the disk management to wipe them (deleting the volume and creating a new partition and format) I have also tried using the drive in question all by itself and it still won't show when installing windows, but if I add it later or use another drive to put the OS on it will show up then.

I have downloaded and used WD's tools to wipe it, run 0's on it, the smart test shows absolutely no problems with it (as does crystaldisk info)

Am I missing something here or do I just need to forget about putting windows on this drive?

 

[Ketchup]

It sounds like the one that won't show up is plugged into a controller that Windows setup doesn't recognize. What board is this? And what ports are you plugging the drives into?

 

[Rob_63]

Boards:
Intel DP55KG
Asus PQ5-Pro
Intel DB43LD

It wouldn't be the controller, I swapped the drives around and all other drives I have work, it is definitely the one particular drive.

 

[dma0991]

If the HDD is visible in W7(desktop) as an extra drive, try cloning utilities to add in an existing partition with W7. It sounds like something's messed up with that HDD instead, probably wiped out some information that shouldn't be erased.

 

[Ketchup]

So it does the same thing if you try a windows install on the Intel DB43LD?

 

[Rob_63]

So it does the same thing if you try a windows install on the Intel DB43LD?

Yes, the drive always shows up in the bios but does not show up when trying to install windows in any of those three boards. however once windows has been installed on another drive it shows up in my computer as a drive and works adding files to it. baffling....

If the HDD is visible in W7(desktop) as an extra drive, try cloning utilities to add in an existing partition with W7. It sounds like something's messed up with that HDD instead, probably wiped out some information that shouldn't be erased.

I have it"s working twin brother in the DB43LD currently as the OS drive, I will try using WD's acronis program and see if that works.

 

[C1]

If you wanted to spend the time, I would get a utility and compare the firmware attributes of the two HDDs to detect differences.

The issue sounds similar to XP for AHCI in which one has to use the F6 option to upfront install the proper Intel chipset drivers otherwise the windows installation is unable to see the target drive.

 

[Ketchup]

Yes, the drive always shows up in the bios but does not show up when trying to install windows in any of those three boards. however once windows has been installed on another drive it shows up in my computer as a drive and works adding files to it. baffling....

Indeed. I like C1's idea of checking the firmware. At least you know you can install with the other drive and just clone it, but an added headache nonetheless.

 

[Rob_63]

I just downloaded WD's Acronis on the DB43LD computer with the working twin drive, added the uncooperative drive to it, ran Acronis disk clone and no joy, when it would reboot it would go into the screen where the copy should take place but it was blank, after entering windows it didn't do anything to the bad drive.

So I went into disk management and erased the partion leaving it unallocated, tried Acronis again and same deal, it didn't do anything to it.

Then I used the "Create New Disk" option in Acronis, clicked to make it a MBR partition, ran disc clone and it finally spent time on the copy screen with the appropriate graphs showing progress. Now in windows it looks exactly the same as the OS drive, so I am going to guess now it should show up in windows when I use it as an OS drive, which I will find out later since I plan on trying it on a rig I am building now.

I will post back later with results.

Thanks to all for the replies/help

 

[Ketchup]

Then I used the "Create New Disk" option in Acronis, clicked to make it a MBR partition, ran disc clone and it finally spent time on the copy screen with the appropriate graphs showing progress. Now in windows it looks exactly the same as the OS drive, so I am going to guess now it should show up in windows when I use it as an OS drive, which I will find out later since I plan on trying it on a rig I am building now.

I will post back later with results.

Thanks to all for the replies/help

One would have thought Windows would see the disk and make its own partition. Maybe it has something to do with its part on the RAID array.

 

[Rob_63]

One would have thought Windows would see the disk and make its own partition. Maybe it has something to do with its part on the RAID array.

I was thinking along that line too, when I was in the "create new disk" portion of Acronis it showed the good hard drive I had the OS on as "Primary Slave" and the one I was having problems with as "Primary Master" ??

I just installed it in my server as the OS drive and it showed up normally during installation, so it functional now.

Thanks to all for your suggestions/guidance/help!

Rob