Vista Setup Cannot Find HDD

[phxpoet]

I got all the final parts for my new computer today. Put together all the hardware relatively easily. Went into the BIOS to set it to load from my optical drive first, then I popped in the Vista disc and rebooted so the OS setup started.

Everything was fine up until it asked me to specify where to install Vista and it told me it couldn't find any hard drives, even though I have a WD Caviar Blue / SE / SE16 WD6400AAKS 640GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive. The HDD is also recognized by my BIOS.

Basically it's telling me I need the drivers for my HDD, but I bought it OEM so there was no disc that came with the HDD itself. So it said I had to create something like a mass storage location for the OS.

First thing I tried was disconnecting and reconnecting the SATA data and power cables, which didn't work.

I Googled around and read something uploading the SATA drivers from my motherboard installation disc, which I have. So during Vista setup I popped that in, browsed the drive contents and found the folder with the SATA drivers. After all that, it still told me that no drivers could be found.

Next I tried going to the Western Digital site and downloading the Data Lifeguard Tools. I installed those onto a folder, put the folder on a USB drive, then started the OS installation over again. Essentially I tried with the USB drive what I tried with the motherboard installation disc. Found the right folder but again it says no drivers were found.

Next, I downloaded all the appropriate drivers I could find from the manufacturers' Web sites and put them on the USB drive as well. They aren't listed under those compatible with the hardware unless I changed the OnChip SATA Type in the Integrated Peripheral Settings in my BIOS from IDE to AHCI. Using the AHCI setting also allows me to see the HDD in my BIOS, but it isn't listed as an AHCI device during the little AHCI Device Detection Screen.

When I set the OnChip SATA Type to IDE, there's no AHCI Device Detection Screen and the HDD shows up in my BIOS, but when I enter Vista setup, it won't show the drivers off the USB drive unless I click off the option to ignore drivers that aren't compatible with the hardware.

There's a couple things I haven't tired yet: 1) While keeping the boot disk priority to Optical Drive first, put in my motherboard installation disc rather than the Visa installation disc (this is just something I pulled out of my [censored] so really not sure it'll work). 2) Use the downloadable tools off of Western Digitial's site to set up the HDD on another computer: essentially, create and format a bootable partition using a system that already has an OS.

Thoughts?

[CrowdAds]

[crabby]

That hard drive should be automatically supported by Vista. I would suggest booting to the hard drive with the option 'Try other boot locations' on in your BIOS... It should then still boot to disk after having tried to boot to the hard drive.

Whilst that might make it show... I think your issue might be that the hard drive is unpartitioned. I would attach it to another computer and create an NTFS partition table then retry the install.

Let us know if either of these works

crabby

[phxpoet]

I'll try to summarize a little better in case my first post was confusing to anyone:

When I go into the BIOS and enable AHCI and IDE type, it will show the HDD in my BIOS, but will list not it as one of the AHCI drives on a AHCI device detection screen.

On the other hand, when I enable AHCI and SATA type, it will not show my HDD in the BIOS but it will list as one of the AHCI drives on a AHCI device detection screen.

When I enable Native IDE, the HDD will appear on my BIOS and there is no AHCI device detection screen. However, when I go through Vista installation, it will not show any compatible drivers on the USB drive.

I'm going to try installing both 32 and 64 bit drivers with AHCI and IDE enabled because at least my BIOS is seeing it.

I should also note that in all cases my BIOS and AHCI screens are finding my optical drive.

And I think it might be worth noting that when I was browsing for drivers during the setup, I tried to explore the C drive only to be told the drive needed to be formatted, so I clicked Format Drive and it told me it couldn't be formatted, to check the connections and make sure the drive wasn't set to read-only. Should this happen?

[crabby]

Do you have the option of attaching it to a system which already has an OS in order to format the drive? Or, even a XP disk to format it?

You really shouldn't need a driver: Windows Vista Compatibility Western Digital WD Caviar SE16 WD6400AAKS - hard drive - 640 GB - SATA-300

crabby

[phxpoet]

Originally Posted by crabby

Do you have the option of attaching it to a system which already has an OS in order to format the drive? Or, even a XP disk to format it?

You really shouldn't need a driver: Windows Vista Compatibility Western Digital WD Caviar SE16 WD6400AAKS - hard drive - 640 GB - SATA-300

crabby

We have another computer in the house, but it's so old it doesn't have SATA connectors on the motherboard, the power supply doesn't have any SATA connectors, and the HDD doesn't have a 4 pin peripheral power connection.

However, my dad's friend builds computers all the time, so I'll be taking the HDD and anything I might need over to his place today to see if installing it on a system with an OS, partitioning it, and formatting it makes it work on my system.