Help Pls! Cannot install Vista becasue of HD's!

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Gambit2008

Weaksauce
Joined
Apr 3, 2008
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Hi guys...

i managed to build my 1st ever pc and everything seemed to be fine..up till now!

Basically i am installing vista 64bit and i have two identical 500gb seagate hard drives. One i shall be using for system and programs and the other for storage.

Now in the bios both seem to be detected.

When i get to the vista install screen where u choose where you want the OS to be installed they show up. There are options to install on DIsk 0 and Disc 1 with free space written next to them. However when i try to install on either of the two a message comes up saying something like:

Computers hardware may not support booting to this hard disk. Ensure that the disks controller is enabled in computers BIOS.

Now i have no idea what this means and everything seems to be fine in BIOS. Also i do not have any driver discs with the HD's. The motherboard Driver disc does not seem to have anything as well. I have an Asus rampage formula x48 btw.

Someone help plz :(
 
Which of the follwoing suggestions should i pick lol? I am confused.

Why does the new hd need to be formatted and what does it mean to change from IDE to AHCI?
 
When you load into Vista and it shows the hard drive you should see an icon to "format". You want to chose that option to format the drive (make sure its your c:), it will then install onto it. Once you load into vista you can format your slave drive and it will work correctly.
 
I see that option along with others like refresh, delete load driver and extend. However i am not able to click and select format as it is not highlighted? :(

I don't know if this is helpful but the drives that show up say:

Disk 0 Unallocated space 465.8gb (total size) 465.8 (free space)
Disk 1 Unallocated space 465.8gb (total size) 465.8 (free space)

There is also a column next to it called type with nothing written underneath
 
Thats very odd.....Does it do it for both drives? Like Flexion said make sure ACHI support is enabled and make sure your controller card is set to SATA. You can look in your motherboard manual to see where this option is
 
In my bios i have the option to set the sata as either ide, raid or achi. Is this where i change to ACHI?

I am unsure what is meant by setting the controller card to SATA. I can't find anything in my BIOS which has such an option :(
 
Try disconnecting the second drive......install the OS to the remaining drive, then after install, shut down, attach second drive. That should work. Happened to me a few months back.

I have seen this happen a couple time with multiple drives and vista, even different brands together. Seems to be an oddball occurrence/incompatibility.
 
@Sanitarium: Yes they are both SATA drives

Thanks guys!

I finally managed to install Vista! Like Rapture said i disconnected the second hard drive and i was able to install on it with just one HD plugged in. However i was not able to format and vista just started installing itself. The vista HD shows up as NTFS anyway so i'm guessing thats ok?

Then later i plugged in the second HD (for storage/files) and formatted it to NTFS as well.

However there are two things i am uncertain about.

1) The orginal HD i installed vista on shows up as Disk 1 (under disk management) and the second HD (storage one) shows up as Disk 0. Is this a problem and how if possible can i get the second HD to show as Disk 1 and the OS HD as Disk 0?

2) Sorry guys but when installing i did not set the SATA config as ACHI but left it as IDE. is this a bad thing? How would i go about changing it to ACHI without having to reinstall the OS? I tried to but windows does not boot and just shows a blue screen.

3) How would i be able to tell that my HD's are running at SATA 300 speed?
 
It will be NTFS, and if the OS is working then it's all fine.

1. It's not a problem if it's all working. The one with the OS should say it's both System and Boot (among other things)? I expect it just enumerates them based on how they're connected to the SATA controller.

2. You have to ensure that the AHCI drivers are installed and loaded first:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/922976

It's not a big deal though, unless you intend to start hot-swapping them or really want NCQ enabled (which is a debate in itself). It won't impair normal functioning of the disks.

3. I'm not sure if there's any way to know for sure, other than running HD Tach and seeing if the burst speed is over 150MB/s.
 
Thanks for that Mithent!

I tried what it said in the 922976 Microsoft artical and it worked perfect!

Regarding the disk 0 and disk 1 thing...its a bit funny as yesterday and today it kept swapping the hd's. Sometimes it showed the OS HD to be disk 1 and storage HD to be 0 , then later the opposite way round! Wonder why that is. Right now its recognising the OS HD as Disk 0.

I will also check into the speed thing alter..am going to try get all the cabling neat now lol

I w
 
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