Windows cannot partition hard drive during clean installation -- really need help

hypakz

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Jun 27, 2013
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Hi guys. So this is a long story, i'll try to condense it as much as possible.
Built my first computer. Everything was fine. Then my hard drive started squealing and it would freeze until the squealing stopped. This would come and go. I deduced that it was a capacitor issue and filed an RMA with Western Digital.

When my new HDD came I tried to clone the drive. But every time the cloning got to a certain sector the original HDD would squeal again and freeze. I could not clone. I backed up all my data and wanted to do a clean install of windows on my new HDD.

I only have the media upgrade for windows 7, so I tried using that first. I got the message "windows cannot partition selected drive" when I booted to the install disk. I contacted Western Digital and they RMA'd me again.

Third drive came, same problem. I tried deleting all existing partitions and make a new one to install on but same result. I thought it might be the disk. So i downloaded a windows iso file to a flash drive and tried that. Again it could not format. However, if i formatted the disk using my existing windows (connecting my working-but dying hard drive and the new one and then using disk manager) I could create partitions.

Then If i tried to install using the iso file on the flash drive I could get to the installation I would inevitably get some error about not being able to transfer files or not being able to copy files required for installation or not being able to set the offline locale information during install. None of these mean anything to me. I tried using windows 7 enterprise iso instead, but that didn't work either.

I then tried installing Ubuntu to my HDD, using the flash drive. Again I got the "cannot partition the disk" error.

It doesn't seem possible that BOTH of my RMA HDD's are broken. It has to be something else, right?

I have no idea what to do, have spent a week on this, am nervous I won't get it fixed and am at a complete loss. Please, any help would be appreciated so much. I have no idea where to go from here.
 
on your new build..check that the cd-rom drive and hard drive are on the intel sata ports and the ports are set to achi mode not raid or ide. before you install the os again make sure the mb bios is up to date to rule out a bios bug.
if you have an amd motherboard and cpu you need to downlaod the amd drivers for the mb chipset and put them on a cd or usb stick expanded and do the f6 advance mode install for windows or make a slipstream iso with the drivers.
 

hypakz

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Jun 27, 2013
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Thanks a lot for the post.
I'm confused what you mean about the Intel sata ports? I have 6 sata posted on my mobo, what's the difference? . I have an msi motherboard with Intel processor.

The board is configured as asch and uefi+legacy for the boot.

It sounds like you think it's a motherboard issue and not a hdd issue?
 

hypakz

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Jun 27, 2013
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I just tried diskpart from my Windows install disk and got this:

Diskpart has encountered an error:the parameter is incorrect. See the system even log for more information

Any help?
 

hypakz

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Jun 27, 2013
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Okay. I'm using a z87 mobo with the Haswell chipset. So I should be good, right?

Do you still think it's a mobo issue? It seems strange that I would have the same partition error on two separate hard drives.

What could possibly be wrong with the mobo that I would be able to boot off of my old drive but not be able to install to a new drive? Some kind of driver or controller maybe? What do you think?

Thanks again for the help.