Hard Drive new system build.

You don't need to partition the drive. Partitioning doesn't actually do anything for you anyway. All you need to do is stick the OS install disc into the optical and follow the on screen instructions.

You need to format the HDD when you are installing the OS - there's a command format NTFS. You can make more partitions later in Windows if you want, keep for the one with the OS , say, 50G and all the rest for the second partition so you won't have to erase the whole drive and lose your data when reinstalling the OS.

thanks, operating system wont show hard drive when i try select the drive device in operating system install. so i am guessing it is a SATA problem or a faulty hard drive, if switching the sata ports does not work ill return this one and buy another hard drive tonight.

You mean you can't see it in the BIOS? Try some other SATA ports on the mobo until it shows up in there.

no, i see it in the bios, but once i leave the bios and try to boot the operating system and it gives me the option of what storage device i want install it on the hard drive does not pop up on the screen for the OS installation for some reason.

Did you plug the drive into both the motherboard and the PSU?

Also, to be clear, you don't have to format the drive BEFORE starting the installation. When the installation starts, you'll be asked to designate the "C" drive (the boot drive). Then it will ask you to format the drive. Formatting isn't something you have to do ahead of time.

Something else to point out, but if you have mulitple drives, the one that isn't the "C" drive will need to be formatted once you get inside Windows.

The drive is plugged into both Mother Board through SATA and power cord. My hard drive is a western Digital Caviar blue 320gb. and power supply is CORSAIR CMPSU-750TX 750W ATX12V. That hard drive is my only drive, and it shows in the bios the first master wdc 3200 ect. when i get home from work i will try to change the SATA cord and Power cord and see what happens.

I don't know what BIOS do you have but try this: Set the new HDD as primary boot device and go from there, maybe you have an option to format it in your BIOS.

If this doesn't work, put the HDD into some other PC, format it in Windows (right click My Computer icon/manage/right click on the new HDD (not on some other HDD in there!!!) and format it NTFS. After that it will work.

Thanks for all of your responces. I figured this problem out last week searching the forums. Apparently i am not the only one with this issue. So i went to the store bought a new hard drive same type same exact one, tried to boot windows and it worked. So i don't know why my bios would read my original hard drive and not post in the windows 7 format/partition. Furthermore, when i booted windows on my new hard drive the old hard drive was able to get formated as well. I am not sure why this happened but it did. Could be luck of the draw.