What do I do if, after formatting my hard drive, my computer doesn't recognize my hard drive?

Question

Gateway GT5678 System, Western Digital SATA Caviar HD, Windows Vista (64-bit) OS.

I formatted the HD last night due to what appeared to be numerous registry errors within Vista. This is a relatively new system and this is the first time I've attempted wiping the HD and re-installing Vista.

I attempted doing a fresh install from both a Windows XP DVD and a Vista DVD. Neither had any effect. I discovered that the SATA DVD drive that is installed was not reading the DVDs.

I then cannabilized a PATA DVD drive from an older system and installed it in the new system. After doing this the Vista DVD boots up fine. It begins the installation, but at the point at which you need to select a drive or partition to install to, there are no drives listed.

Any help or suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks ahead of time.

Answer 1

Check to see if all your drives are being detected when you first turn it on (the screen that shows the drives and ram installed etc...).  

If you don't see it there, make sure whatever drives are on the same cable as the hard drive have the jumpers on the back set to "cable select".

Answer 2

It would appear that the sata drivers for your drive may not be available.

Try checking the bios settings and set your sata drive to ide mode.

Answer 3

I had a similar problem.  If you are trying to install XP, you need to include the SATA drivers on the installation CD for XP.  You know the part where you get the blue screen, and at the bottom of it it says what it's installing, drivers, RAID, etc.?  It's at that point when it installs the SATA drivers and THEN only after that you'll be able to see the hard drive to install to.  You'll need to create an ISO image of XP and include the SATA drivers.  PowerISO works great.  That's what I had to do.