SATA drive not detected by Windows Installer

rwebb616

Honorable
Jul 31, 2012
2
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10,510
Hi everyone. My first post on here but long time lurker and long time IT professional. I have a really weird one here that I can't figure out.

Working on a Dell Inspiron 545S which should have an Intel Matrix Storage Manager chip for the sata in RAID/AHCI mode. Windows 7 installer will not detect the drive either in ACHI or IDE mode no matter what I do. I have a utility called BootIT that I use for partitioning and the like and it can see the hard drive no problem - in fact I copied data from the drive prior to formatting for a fresh windows install.

I've tried all sorts of different things to get it to detect (including providing the Intel F6 drivers) and nothing. I finally grabbed one of my other hard drives laying around and plugged it in and Windows detects that one no problem. Could this be a hardware issue with the drive even though it appears in my partitioning software? As a side note the drive that I put in is detected in AHCI mode without drivers being installed - so I don't know if Windows 7 has Intel MSM drivers built-in or what.

One thing I have not tried was a different sata cable.

Any ideas what could be going on or do I need a new drive?

Thanks
Rich
 

rwebb616

Honorable
Jul 31, 2012
2
0
10,510
Update - I've now tried a different SATA cable and it made no difference. Only thing I can conclude is bad hard drive since I change no settings in the BIOS and try with a different drive and it works.

Unless someone can give me something to try or confirm otherwise I'm going to go with replacing the drive.

Thanks
Rich