WD 640g needed a partition to install vista for the first time??

[jbauer2485]

I just got a new build and the WD harddrive was being detected by the bios but not during windows install. I tried so many configurations for hours and then finally hooked it up to an older computer which recognized the harddrive immediately. I then created a 100g partition within the drive, and retried it in the new build and it worked.

The question for you is, why would the partition be required for the new build to see it, what would be the optimum partition for the 640g? Also, can you reset the partition after windows is already installed rather than formatting and starting from scratch?

 

[Melodis]

When you're saying it wasn't recognized, do you mean it just wasn't showing up in the list of available drives during Vista setup? Did you try and load any drivers for the device it was connected to (motherboard, raid controller, etc)?

I've had issues myself on SB750 systems where if I don't have the hard drive set to Native IDE Vista won't recognize the drive unless it's setup in an array. What mainboard do you have?

 

[mryerse]

Yeah, sounds like a MB/Controller issue more than an HD issue.

I striped my 640's and set the OS partition to 160GB (80GB per drive). My OS partition has great read rates and seek times across the whole parition. I've seen a similar setup where they set the OS partition to 300GB (150 per), and their HD tune benchmark showed almost zero performance degradation (drop in read rates and seek times) across the OS partition. So if I were to do it again and 160GB (80gb per) wasn't enough, 300GB (150 per) would attain the same performance results. I don't know if you'd get the same performance gain with just one drive, or if it only benefits raid arrays on ICHxr controllers. It's worth a try though.