New installation-No Disk Detected.

Hi Guys.
Briefly. I tried to reformat my dads hard drive to reinstall windows 7. It was in 2 partitions, so i ran the windows 7 disc and it ran through the motions, i formatted the c to re-install windows and it wouldn't let me. I went into dos under diskpart to try and format it that way, still no luck. I connected it to my computer then under disk managment deleted the 2 partitions so there was only 1 now which had the size i.e, 600GB Unallocated. I connected it back into my dads computer and ran the set-up again. Now the computer wont even detect the drive. I need to re-format the drive to like factory default, is this possible, also do i have to do it in dos, I really hope you tech wizards ca help me.
Thanks for your time.
Kevin.

You're trying too hard here. It's way simpler than you think.

Set the DVD drive as the first boot device, boot up and start the install. IN the Windows 7 install window that shows the hard drive. Delete partitions from there and create new ones if you want to. That's why that window is there.

If the BIOS is not seeing the hard drive double-check all your SATA connections. The SATA data cables have a tendency to get bumped easily and disconnect just slightly. So be sure the cable ends are fully seated, especially on the hard drive because that's where most connection issues occur.

Hello ihaveissues,

It depends on the version of Windows 7 that you have. As a good rule of thumb a minimum of 30GB is recommended for Windows 7 *(possibly more for Windows Ultimate).
http://tinyurl.com/obma6q
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If you want to run Windows 7 on your PC, here's what it requires:
1 gigahertz (GHz) or faster 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x64) processor
1 gigabyte (GB) RAM (32-bit) or 2 GB RAM (64-bit)
16 GB available hard disk space (32-bit) or 20 GB (64-bit)
DirectX 9 graphics device with WDDM 1.0 or higher driver
Some Additioinal information with regard to the "system reserved" Partition in Windows 7 setup:
If you do not want the 'System Reserved' partition to be created and existed, the best way is to stop Windows 7 installation process to create the partition when installing Windows 7.
In Windows 7, the feature (100 MB partition to store WinRE files) is installed on all computers if the OS is installed on hard disk with single partition scheme, or unallocated space (space which not yet been partitioned) on the hard disk drive.
Thus in order to skip or avoid the 100M partition to be automatically created during installation, here’s a few rules to follow when choosing where to install Windows 7 to:
1. Do not install Windows 7 to a hard disk that not yet been partitioned or to unallocated space (When install Windows 7 to unallocated space, no warning pop-up or confirmation is asked, and setup will straight away and directly create partition 200 MB of disk space as special partition without notification).
2. If possible, try to create all the necessary partition(s) and format the partition(s) before attempting to install Windows 7.
3. If you’re installing Windows 7 into a new hard disk, or a blank hard disk with no partition defined yet, or if you must delete all existing partitions to start afresh, chose Drive options (advanced). Delete (if applicable) unwanted partitions. Then, click New to create the single partition or multiple partitions according to your own preference.
When prompted with dialog box saying "To ensure that all Windows features work correctly, Windows might create additional partitions for system files", click on Cancel button. Optionally, to be double confirm, Format the partition before selecting it to install Windows 7
Finally, if you want to do some research; there are also some great articles, instructional videos and such to help with your Windows 7, installation, migration and upgrade decisions located at our Springboard site:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/default.aspx
Thanks again and good luck!
John M.
Microsoft Windows Client Support

John,
As I'm building up a new system and will be starting with a new HDD to which I am planning on installing 3 different O/S. Can you please give an opinion as to the best way (most likely to work successfully) of setting up the partitions and in which order I should install the O/S's. At this stage I am going for Linux Mint 9/Win XP pro & Win7 ultimate 64bit.

Thanks,
Mychael

Mychael, may I ask why you wouldn't just run dualboot, 1. Linux and 2. W7 Ult w/ Virtual XP? Is there something in XP Pro that you can't run Virtually?

Oh I probably could but I've got an unused XP Pro I can install and I'll have the disk space. I personally think though that a full O/S will always be better then a VM.

I agree 100% with that, having used several VM's, and still using a couple. If you have the space on your drive (XP Pro will run on 25GB fine), tri-boot XP, 7, then Mint. It really doesn't take a ton of disc space to run 4 OS's. In fact, on my notebook, I have a 100GB drive (93GB usable), and have 2K, XP Pro, XP Media Center Edition and 7 Pro. 2K runs on 10GB, XP Pro on 15GB, XP Media Center on 25GB and 7 Pro takes the rest. If the system would allow me, I could shrink 7 by 10GB and run Mint on that. But I have that installed on my old backup drive (a WD Passport).

I know Mychael has a lot more space than that, should he shouldn't have to run XP in a VM. I only use VM's on Mint now, as Mint runs fine on low specs, and you can easily "lend" another OS (7 Home Basic on one, 7 Home Premium on another) enough RAM to run on. One OS that you would never want to run in a VM (unless you have 6+GB RAM) is Vista. It can hardly run on 2GB (32 bit) and still is not the fastest with 4GB (64 bit). There's no since in me even trying to run Vista in a VM, and won't even waste my time trying to do so.

Yeah, it would be nice to run a Hackintosh with Snow Leopard as a fourth partition.
I'm still thinking of different options. I'd like to run a mirrored Raid set up again but that's expensive and I've already learnt the hard way the Linux does not like Raid.

It would be really good if with a multi boot system you could have all your emails and address book accesible from whichever O/S was loaded at the time, it probably could be done but above my abilities.