Traditions are fun, so I'll copy Rob's lead on the thread title. 
Besides clearing my thoughts by putting pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard as it were) I'm going to make this post in the obscure hope somebody might know what is going on or has seen this issue before. Even if not, it might make for an amusing read for those that enjoy watching people pull their hair out.
Lets set the scene... New SSD's have arrived for testing and its time to set up the benchmarking system for them. Naturally we decided Windows 7 RTM was the only real choice for the operating system, as it holds advantages over Vista and XP is pretty much a non-option for SSD's due to its obsolescence.
There's no point in benchmarking an SSD without showing what the presumed gains would be in comparison to a regular hard drive though, right? So I hook up an unused Seagate 320GB 7200.10 hard drive and attempt to install Windows 7 onto it for initial testing and later on, actual benchmarking.
Everything ground to a halt when Windows 7 couldn't find the drive to install onto. I thought maybe I mistakingly set a a BIOS setting incorrectly... Native SATA mode enabled, check. AHCI enabled, yes... Pausing here, it is worth noting both Windows 7 and Vista have built-in AHCI drivers for SATA devices using Intel's chipsets, and should not need any drivers. Yet the Windows install continued to refuse to detect it.
Presuming I misremembered this fact, I disabled the Native SATA mode and also disabled AHCI before attempting a normal install... but then as no surprise Windows 7 still could not detect the drive. Was the drive seen in the BIOS? Hmm, yes... at this point I replaced the cable and changed the power connector anyway for good measure, neither to any effect.
Well, then I wondered what if I load the AHCI preinstall driver anyway from a USB drive? I loaded those up, re-enabled AHCI and native SATA mode, and once at the drive installation screen I selected the Load Driver option. Effortlessly Windows 7 detected the correct ICH9R driver and after clicking next, presto! Suddenly the hiding 320GB Seagate drive was detected! But wait... it was listed as a 592GB drive? Well this drive used to be part of a RAID 5 array, and apparently Windows 7 somehow detected the original array size. However the problem is the options to delete, modify, or format the drive were grayed out, and long story short Windows 7 said the drive controller did not support an installation. (I actually tried two versions, the drivers specific to the motherboard for Vista64, and then Intel's own designed for Windows 7 RC 64 because Intel has as of yet not released the official 7 RTM AHCI drivers)
Then an idea hit me; I remembered Seagate jumpered their SATA drives to only work at SATA 1.5Gb's specs for compatibility reasons... I removed the jumper, but again still the same problems would occur. Trying different SATA ports also didn't help.
Skipping ahead I'd had enough. I took a second Seagate 320GB drive, used Windows 7 to quick format the drive using the NTFS defaults, and attempted to install Windows 7 onto this new, second drive. Long story short the exact same situation occurred as with the first drive. Growing more flummoxed and dredging up the last of my ideas I went back and did a several hour long low-level format of the drive to completely erase the drive as well as the drive tables, but again to no avail.
Exasperated as there is no reason for these issues to be occurring at all, I enabled AHCI and native SATA mode with the SSD hooked up instead. Low and behold the SSD was detected without any issue and without the need for any AHCI driver, and almost exactly 15 minutes later I had Windows 7's desktop on my screen. And oddly enough, both of the problematic 320GB hard drives are detected and work fine from inside Windows 7, but I simply can't install Windows 7 onto them!
This computer uses a Q6600 with the venerable P35 chipset, so the hardware in question is very common. Now keep in mind this exact system previously had Windows 7 Beta installed on it using an old IDE drive. I tested the IDE drive with the Windows 7 RTM disc and it did give me the option to install onto it, yet still not either of the SATA Seagate drives...
So far I've Googled for others with a similar problem, but as Windows 7 RTM is not sold in retail stores just yet and installation problems abound from users it has been hard to find anything of possible relevance. I have only found one similar sounding situation with the Windows 7 RC without any solution given except to use an IDE drive. So far one common factor seems to be the Gigabyte P35 motherboards (GA-EP35-DS4 here), but with only a smattering of questionable posts to go by I can't say anything as of yet.
I'd post a few images, except the CCD sensor in my Powershot S60 died today without warning, which is apparently a symptom of the massive CCD failure problem that caught the public's attention around 2005 and continued to make news in 2006-2007.
The specific instance I use the ICH9 driver and the Windows 7 installer does see the Seagate 320GB SATA drive, I receive this error when attempting to install onto it: "Windows cannot be installed to this disk. This computer hardware may not support booting to this disk. Ensure that the disk's controller is enabled in the computer's BIOS menu."
Oh, and for kicks I booted to the Windows 7 install on the SSD. Windows 7 detected and let me use the Seagate SATA hard drive as normal. But when I launch the Windows 7 installer from inside Windows 7, it still couldn't see the drive despite it clearly being shown under My Computer:
Suffice to say this is not a promising start for Windows 7.
Besides clearing my thoughts by putting pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard as it were) I'm going to make this post in the obscure hope somebody might know what is going on or has seen this issue before. Even if not, it might make for an amusing read for those that enjoy watching people pull their hair out.
Lets set the scene... New SSD's have arrived for testing and its time to set up the benchmarking system for them. Naturally we decided Windows 7 RTM was the only real choice for the operating system, as it holds advantages over Vista and XP is pretty much a non-option for SSD's due to its obsolescence.
There's no point in benchmarking an SSD without showing what the presumed gains would be in comparison to a regular hard drive though, right? So I hook up an unused Seagate 320GB 7200.10 hard drive and attempt to install Windows 7 onto it for initial testing and later on, actual benchmarking.
Everything ground to a halt when Windows 7 couldn't find the drive to install onto. I thought maybe I mistakingly set a a BIOS setting incorrectly... Native SATA mode enabled, check. AHCI enabled, yes... Pausing here, it is worth noting both Windows 7 and Vista have built-in AHCI drivers for SATA devices using Intel's chipsets, and should not need any drivers. Yet the Windows install continued to refuse to detect it.
Presuming I misremembered this fact, I disabled the Native SATA mode and also disabled AHCI before attempting a normal install... but then as no surprise Windows 7 still could not detect the drive. Was the drive seen in the BIOS? Hmm, yes... at this point I replaced the cable and changed the power connector anyway for good measure, neither to any effect.
Well, then I wondered what if I load the AHCI preinstall driver anyway from a USB drive? I loaded those up, re-enabled AHCI and native SATA mode, and once at the drive installation screen I selected the Load Driver option. Effortlessly Windows 7 detected the correct ICH9R driver and after clicking next, presto! Suddenly the hiding 320GB Seagate drive was detected! But wait... it was listed as a 592GB drive? Well this drive used to be part of a RAID 5 array, and apparently Windows 7 somehow detected the original array size. However the problem is the options to delete, modify, or format the drive were grayed out, and long story short Windows 7 said the drive controller did not support an installation. (I actually tried two versions, the drivers specific to the motherboard for Vista64, and then Intel's own designed for Windows 7 RC 64 because Intel has as of yet not released the official 7 RTM AHCI drivers)
Then an idea hit me; I remembered Seagate jumpered their SATA drives to only work at SATA 1.5Gb's specs for compatibility reasons... I removed the jumper, but again still the same problems would occur. Trying different SATA ports also didn't help.
Skipping ahead I'd had enough. I took a second Seagate 320GB drive, used Windows 7 to quick format the drive using the NTFS defaults, and attempted to install Windows 7 onto this new, second drive. Long story short the exact same situation occurred as with the first drive. Growing more flummoxed and dredging up the last of my ideas I went back and did a several hour long low-level format of the drive to completely erase the drive as well as the drive tables, but again to no avail.
Exasperated as there is no reason for these issues to be occurring at all, I enabled AHCI and native SATA mode with the SSD hooked up instead. Low and behold the SSD was detected without any issue and without the need for any AHCI driver, and almost exactly 15 minutes later I had Windows 7's desktop on my screen. And oddly enough, both of the problematic 320GB hard drives are detected and work fine from inside Windows 7, but I simply can't install Windows 7 onto them!
This computer uses a Q6600 with the venerable P35 chipset, so the hardware in question is very common. Now keep in mind this exact system previously had Windows 7 Beta installed on it using an old IDE drive. I tested the IDE drive with the Windows 7 RTM disc and it did give me the option to install onto it, yet still not either of the SATA Seagate drives...
So far I've Googled for others with a similar problem, but as Windows 7 RTM is not sold in retail stores just yet and installation problems abound from users it has been hard to find anything of possible relevance. I have only found one similar sounding situation with the Windows 7 RC without any solution given except to use an IDE drive. So far one common factor seems to be the Gigabyte P35 motherboards (GA-EP35-DS4 here), but with only a smattering of questionable posts to go by I can't say anything as of yet.
I'd post a few images, except the CCD sensor in my Powershot S60 died today without warning, which is apparently a symptom of the massive CCD failure problem that caught the public's attention around 2005 and continued to make news in 2006-2007.
The specific instance I use the ICH9 driver and the Windows 7 installer does see the Seagate 320GB SATA drive, I receive this error when attempting to install onto it: "Windows cannot be installed to this disk. This computer hardware may not support booting to this disk. Ensure that the disk's controller is enabled in the computer's BIOS menu."
Oh, and for kicks I booted to the Windows 7 install on the SSD. Windows 7 detected and let me use the Seagate SATA hard drive as normal. But when I launch the Windows 7 installer from inside Windows 7, it still couldn't see the drive despite it clearly being shown under My Computer:
Suffice to say this is not a promising start for Windows 7.
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