Installing W7 Hard Drive not recognised

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Crawley
Hi,

First off sorry for the double post. I made a thread in the Windows & other software section here http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18236242 but i guess no-one could help and i think it's a motherboard issue so i hope posting here someone who maybe doesn't read that section can help.

I'm building a second pc and installing W7, i get to the point where it asks where to install and no hard drives are listed. I've looked through Google and there's loads of instances of this but i can't find anything that's helped.

The system is:

Gigabyte GA MA-770-UD3 rev 1.0
WD Caviar blue 500gb
Cooler Master 500w PSU
ATI 4870
2GB DDR2 Ram
Athlon 6000

I think i need a driver for the SATA Controller but looking on the Gigabyte site and selecting my mobo and revision i don't know which file i need. I've downloaded the Chipset Driver but when going to 'load drivers' when installing W7 it says there are no compatible files, i've gone through the Chipset Driver file and it have installed some files but nothing that has helped.

I've also changed the AHCI setting to enabled in the BIOS (although i didn't think that would work) and downloaded the AHCI preinstall driver but that doesn't make the HD visible. I've since reverted to the default settings of Native IDE in the BIOS. The BIOS recognises the hard drive but W7 installer doesn't. I contacted Gigabyte a few days ago but they've not come back to me yet.

The Hard drive is new, i thought it might need formatting so i connected it to my main PC with the same cables i've been using and it was recognised straight away and formatted so i think the cables and HD are ok. I've tried another new SATA cable and no difference.

I don't know what else to try, any ideas?
 
If you've got the drives setup as...

AHCI - AMD SATA AHCI Driver (Preinstall driver, press F6 during Windows* setup to read from floppy)

Raid - AMD SATA RAID Driver (Preinstall driver, press F6 during Windows* setup to read from floppy)

Download the exe then run it and select a location to extract to then you'll need to copy the files to something like a usb pendrive then when you install windows select the load option and point it to the folder on the pendrive or what ever device you use......
 
Just checked the manual for your motherboard and you can set it to Native IDE which is the default unless you're planning on using raid that should sort the problem ;)
 
It's just one SATAII drive so i didn't use the RAID Driver. I tried the AHCI option because i couldn't think of anything else that might work but the drive still wasn't detected.

When i did try i used the steps you listed and it didn't work.

It was in Native IDE as default, i changed to AHCI when i used the driver and have changed it back since but W7 still doesn't see the drive.
 
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