[Windows 7] Install cannot see drive


Recommended Posts

Hi Guys,

Need some help as my jet-lag riddled brain cannot figure this out.

One of my PC's seems to have had a bit of a time of it during moving house. One of 2 hard drives has failed, previously in a striped RAID configuration. The other drive appears okay, no SMART errors, and detected by the BIOS. I've removed the defective drive, disabled RAID, and attempting to install Windows 7 just on that one drive.

The BIOS can see the drive plugged in to SATA port 3 just fine, however the Windows 7 installer refuses to detect the drive at all. Any thoughts on why this might be?

This is an older machine, running on an Asus A8N32-SLI Deluxe motherboard, which is an nForce 4 chipset.

Can anybody point me in the right direction?

Thanks

Link to comment
https://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/1084801-windows-7-install-cannot-see-drive/
Share on other sites

Thanks for the help so far guys - to answer some of the points:

Do you have a sata drive on the win 7 install software?

If memory serves press F6 at boot and install the driver from the motherboard CD if it doesnt

Theoretically, it shouldn't need it. The motherboard is an nForce 4 chipset which, as far as I know, is supported natively.

can you see the drive in computer management? it may just be a case of windows has not mounted the drive.

Alas, courtesy of the other drive in the RAID array failing, I can't even boot windows (it was set to Striped mode). What I'm trying to do now is disable RAID entirely and just flat install it on to this disk that used to be part of the RAID array.

Just had the same problem as my SSD card is RMAd in holland. I had to set the harddrive to active in Win 7 setup before Windows would let me install on it.

How did you do that exactly?

Thanks, but unfortunately my motherboard has no driver that needs to be loaded before install :(

You need to download the RAID Controller drivers from the boards manufacturers site, extract them and put them on a FAT32 flash drive

When you reach the drive selection screen, hit the browse for drivers button and point it to the RAID Controller drivers you downloaded

Since you had a raid0 and lost one drive it will not boot until you rebuilt your raid array. Also all your data is gone so I hope you performed backups. Go into the onboard raid controller on post and delete your existing raid array and recreate a new one with both drives. Either raid0 or raid1, if you go raid0 again, buy a backup drive. Once this is done boot into windows 7 and it should show as one phycisal volume and simply install Windows 7. If Windows 7 does not see the volume then using a flash drive, download the motherboard raid controller drivers and extract them, Select the driver at the Windows 7 installer screen and the hard drive should appear.

And to add I have had that same motherboard and I had the SATA ports fail on it one day out of the blue. I was also running raid0 on that mobo and also disabled the raid controller to test out what was going on. The bios detected the drives but Windows 7 would not see the drives and or would sometimes lockup at the Windows 7 install screen. After flashing the firmware, resetting the bios I had no luck so I just bought a new mobo. There is no official support for nForce4 from Nvidia for Windows 7 so the drivers for the raid array are most likley included in the Windows 7 iso image.

Since you had a raid0 and lost one drive it will not boot until you rebuilt your raid array. Also all your data is gone so I hope you performed backups. Go into the onboard raid controller on post and delete your existing raid array and recreate a new one with both drives. Either raid0 or raid1, if you go raid0 again, buy a backup drive. Once this is done boot into windows 7 and it should show as one phycisal volume and simply install Windows 7. If Windows 7 does not see the volume then using a flash drive, download the motherboard raid controller drivers and extract them, Select the driver at the Windows 7 installer screen and the hard drive should appear.

He said he already disabled RAID and is trying to use it as a single drive

@Detection I noticed that

You need to download the RAID Controller drivers from the boards manufacturers site, extract them and put them on a FAT32 flash drive

When you reach the drive selection screen, hit the browse for drivers button and point it to the RAID Controller drivers you downloaded

He said already that he disabled RAID and is trying to use it as a single drive

Get over it dude, just trying to help...

Try a diskpart on the drive

http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=diskpart+drive

Your raid configuration has probably left the drive in a state where Windows 7 Setup wont touch it as it's treated as a forgein disk.

Make sure that you have the drive as the bootable drive in your BIOS/EFI and that you have a disk mode that both the motherboard and the drive are happy with (e.g. AHCI/SATA Native or IDE Mode/IDE Compatability).

@Detection I noticed that

He said already that he disabled RAID and is trying to use it as a single drive

Get over it dude, just trying to help...

Wow, touchy much?

If you can't hack people pointing out what has already been said in a thread, probably better read them first don't you think ?

Thanks guys - I appreciate the help here. We're making some progress! Turns out that Aergan was on the right track with this. I've done a diskpart and setup can at least now see the drive! However, we're now going through a whole "windows cannot be installed to this disk, the computer's hardware may not support booting to this disk" thing. I'm just trying a "clean all" in diskpart and hoping we can move forward from there.

Unfortunately, this old motherboard is an absolute pile of $* - you cannot specify what mode the disk runs on, and from what I can google it's suggesting that AHCI isn't supported anyhow, so it's running it in IDE mode. Hopefully we're getting there now. Any thoughts on the "Windows cannot be installed to this disk" message would be much appreciated though.

Really appreciate ALL of the thoughts and suggestions so far.

Thanks guys - I appreciate the help here. We're making some progress! Turns out that Aergan was on the right track with this. I've done a diskpart and setup can at least now see the drive! However, we're now going through a whole "windows cannot be installed to this disk, the computer's hardware may not support booting to this disk" thing. I'm just trying a "clean all" in diskpart and hoping we can move forward from there.

Unfortunately, this old motherboard is an absolute pile of $* - you cannot specify what mode the disk runs on, and from what I can google it's suggesting that AHCI isn't supported anyhow, so it's running it in IDE mode. Hopefully we're getting there now. Any thoughts on the "Windows cannot be installed to this disk" message would be much appreciated though.

Really appreciate ALL of the thoughts and suggestions so far.

You might be able to install Windows to that drive anyway. The other day I was installing Windows 8 to a VHD and it gave that error, but I was able to ignore it and install Windows on it.

Did you try deleting and remaking the disk partition in the windows set up?

I certainly did :) It was at that point that I get this error message now.

You might be able to install Windows to that drive anyway. The other day I was installing Windows 8 to a VHD and it gave that error, but I was able to ignore it and install Windows on it.

Hmmm, it would appear that's an improvement in Windows 8 over 7 - this darned thing just will not let you continue :/

at setup do diskpart (SHIFT+F10)

then try.....

I've done that one before, which is what managed to get the drive recognised by Setup. Unfortunately, that's not getting around this "The hardware may not support booting from this disk" error. I've left a "clean all" running on it at the moment in the vague hope that might fix it up. I'll then try creating and flagging the partitions manually.

I think failing that, maybe I should attempt to install Ubuntu just to get SOME kind of O/S on the disk and booting, then attempt to re-format and install windows over the top of it.

Believe it or not, it's actually only a 500GB drive, which is why I'm so confused it's giving me all this trouble!

However - we finally have success :) After a thorough clean all, a large dose of patience, and a reboot later and it is now installing! Thank you everyone!

This topic is now closed to further replies.
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
  • Posts

    • Wow, Microsoft IS cooking lately... This only shows that they COULD improve, they just chose not to for whatever reasons. That obsession with AI was destroying them from the inside out.
    • BATorrent 4.1.0 by Razvan Serea BATorrent is a lightweight, open-source BitTorrent client built with modern C++ and Qt 6, offering a clean, fast, and privacy-focused alternative to traditional torrent apps. It supports magnet links, .torrent files, resume data, sequential downloading, per-file priorities, and even imports from qBittorrent. Power users benefit from integrated RSS auto-download with regex filtering, duplicate detection, and automatic tracker lists from Stremio. Streaming is seamless thanks to auto-detected players like VLC and IINA. BATorrent includes robust VPN tools—interface binding, auto-detection for WireGuard-based services like Mullvad and NordLynx, kill switch, proxy support, and IP filtering. A full WebUI enables remote control, while integrations with Plex, Jellyfin, and Emby automate library updates. With themes, speed scheduling, system-tray alerts, and cross-platform support for Windows, Linux, and macOS, BATorrent delivers a polished, high-performance torrenting experience. BATorrent features: Core .torrent file and magnet link support Resume data — picks up where you left off after restart Import torrents from qBittorrent Create .torrent files from any file or folder Sequential download mode Per-file priority control (skip, low, normal, high) Seed ratio limits with auto-pause DHT, PEX, UPnP, NAT-PMP RSS Auto-Download Subscribe to RSS feeds — automatically download new torrents as they appear Regex filters — match only what you want (e.g. 1080p|720p, S01E\d+) Per-feed settings — custom save path, check interval (5–1440 min), enable/disable Auto-download — matched items are downloaded automatically in the background Supports magnet links, .torrent URLs, and tags Tray notifications when items are auto-downloaded Duplicate detection — never downloads the same item twice Stremio Stremio Addon System pre-installed — works out of the box Auto tracker list from ngosang/trackerslist Streaming Play while downloading — stream video files before the download is complete Supports mp4, mkv, avi, mov, wmv, flv, webm, m4v, ts Auto-detects installed players (VLC, IINA, system default) VPN & Privacy Interface binding — lock torrent traffic to a specific network interface (e.g. tun0) Auto VPN detection — identifies VPN interfaces (tun, tap, WireGuard, Mullvad, NordLynx, ProtonVPN) Kill switch — automatically pauses all torrents if the VPN interface drops Auto-resume — resumes only the torrents paused by the kill switch when VPN reconnects Proxy support — SOCKS5 and HTTP proxy with optional authentication IP filtering — load P2P blocklists to block unwanted IP ranges Protocol encryption (enabled / forced / disabled) WebUI Remote management — control torrents from any browser at http://localhost:8080 REST API with JSON responses Add torrents via magnet link or .torrent upload Pause, resume, remove torrents remotely View peers and files per torrent Dark theme matching the desktop app HTTP Basic Auth with SHA-256 password hashing Configurable port and remote access (localhost vs 0.0.0.0) Interface 3 themes: Dark, Light, Midnight (bat/vampire aesthetic) Real-time speed graph Detailed panel with tabs: General, Peers, Files, Trackers Filter bar: search by name, filter by state (Active, Downloading, Seeding, Paused, Finished) Drag & drop .torrent files and magnet links Drag & drop reorder in torrent list System tray with notifications (download complete, kill switch events, RSS auto-downloads) Splash screen with bat animation Bilingual: English and Portuguese (BR), auto-detected from system locale Bandwidth Scheduler Alternative speed limits — set different download/upload limits on a schedule Time range — configure active hours (e.g. 01:00 to 07:00), supports overnight ranges Per-day control — choose which days of the week the schedule applies Automatically switches between normal and alternative speeds Media Server Integration Plex — automatically trigger library scan when a download completes Jellyfin / Emby — same automatic library refresh via API Configure server URL and authentication token/key in Settings System Cross-platform: Windows, Linux, macOS Auto-shutdown — automatically shut down PC when all downloads complete (60s cancellable countdown) Auto-update system (AppImage on Linux, installer on Windows, DMG on macOS) CLI arguments: pass .torrent files or magnet: URIs directly Keyboard shortcuts: Space to toggle pause, Ctrl+A to select all, Ctrl+O to open BATorrent 4.1.0 release notes: A community-driven release: everything here came straight from your reports and requests. It closes the remaining gaps with qBittorrent and fixes the Windows settings/tray/splash issues several of you hit. Fixed Settings now actually save. A whole class of preferences — speed limits (and the alternative limits), max active downloads, seed ratio, listen port, max connections, DHT/uTP/encryption, VPN interface, kill switch and proxy — weren't being persisted and reset to defaults on every launch. They now round-trip correctly. (Thanks to everyone who reported "the upload limit always goes back to 0".) Splash and tray toggles stick on Windows. Turning off the startup animation (or "close to tray") no longer reverts — the Windows registry stored these booleans as integers and the UI was misreading them. Close-to-tray hint. The first time the window hides to the tray you get a one-time notification, so the app doesn't look like it vanished (Windows 11 tucks new tray icons into the overflow). macOS Dock icon size. The icon filled its canvas edge-to-edge and rendered larger than neighbouring apps; it now uses the standard safe-area padding. Native file picker language. The "Torrent file / All files" filter in the open dialog follows the app language instead of being hard-coded. Added — qBittorrent parity Alternative speed limits toggle — a turtle button in the toolbar flips your throttled limits on/off instantly, independent of the scheduler. Follow system theme — switch light/dark automatically with the OS (Settings → Appearance). Pre-allocate disk space — reserve the full file size up front to reduce fragmentation (Settings → Downloads). Recheck data on add — optionally force a hash check when adding a torrent, so existing or partial files on disk are detected. Port status indicator — a 🔴 dot in the status bar shows whether your listen port looks reachable (UPnP/NAT-PMP + listen state; fully local, no external check). Add torrent from URL — File → Add torrent from URL (Ctrl+U) fetches a remote .torrent and routes it through the normal add dialog. Export .torrent — right-click a torrent → Export .torrent to save its metadata file. Already there (in case you missed it) Watch folder — auto-add .torrent files dropped into a monitored directory (Settings → Files). This release just surfaces it. Incomplete files already carry a .!bt suffix until they finish. Under the hood Regression tests for the settings-persistence and Windows boolean bugs. A new Qt Quick Test harness covering the startup splash and the design-system widgets. Download: BATorrent 4.1.0 | 37.5 MB (Open Source) Download: BATorrent Portable | 51.7 MB Links: BATorrent Website | Screenshot | Changelog Get alerted to all of our Software updates on Twitter at @NeowinSoftware
    • Disabling open on hover, great! That was so stupid! They need to do a fix, where if a network share is disconnected, it doesn't hang when opening "This PC" for 20 seconds.
  • Recent Achievements

    • Very Popular
      AndrewSteel earned a badge
      Very Popular
    • Veteran
      Taliseian went up a rank
      Veteran
    • One Month Later
      Clizby earned a badge
      One Month Later
    • One Month Later
      Timaximus earned a badge
      One Month Later
    • Week One Done
      Timaximus earned a badge
      Week One Done
  • Popular Contributors

    1. 1
      +primortal
      523
    2. 2
      PsYcHoKiLLa
      170
    3. 3
      +Edouard
      163
    4. 4
      Steven P.
      83
    5. 5
      ATLien_0
      78
  • Tell a friend

    Love Neowin? Tell a friend!