BIOS does not detect HDD's

[Blaaap]

Hello everyone,

Since yesterday I'm having some problems with my laptop, here are the specs:

Fujitsu Amilo Xi3670
Intel Core 2 Quad Q9000
Nvidea Geforce GT 130M
2 x Hitachi 500gb 5400 RPM HDD's
ICH8M-E/ICH9M-E/PCHM SATA RAID Controller

Now to the problem: I can't install Windows 7 because my BIOS does not detect the HDD's in the right way. What I see in my BIOS regarding the HDD's:

SATA HDD:

As you can see above.. the BIOS only sees a SATA HDD device and only one, while there should be two drives, also it does not detect that the drive is a Hitachi drive.

I have removed the two drives and used an old Fujitsu drive, which my BIOS was able to detect as a a Fujitsu SATA HDD, also windows installed without issues on this device.

Offcoure now it may look like the Hitachi drives are faulty, however when I put the Hitachi drives in my old Toshiba laptop, both the drives are detected in the BIOS as SATA HDD: Hitachi etc.

Just to summarize: I want to install Windows 7 on my Fujitsu notebook, which has 2 x 500gb sata drives which are both empty. the BIOS detects only one HDD, but not as an Hitachi HDD. Windows installer also detects one HDD, sees it as unallocated space, but I am unable to create a partition on this disk.
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This all started when I decided to go to RAID 0 a couple of days ago. In my BIOS I had RAID enabled already, but was unsure of how to set it up.
After reading some forums and articles on the web I decided to give it a shot.
I booted from USB to install windows 7 and clicked update driver to get the drivers installed for the SATA RAID controller. After this one of the HDD's dissapeared.
I already extracted driver files from the Fujitsu branded SATA RAID controller installer, used Floppy driver files from Intel website but I am still unable to get both drives to show in the BIOS and Windows installer.

Does anyone knows what the solution may be for my issue, Id be eternally thankfull

Regards, Ab

 

[digibucc]

well no need to have both in there when you are only installing to one, and it may have something to do with the problem.

only put one of your hitachi drives in, and try to install to it. after installation put the other in and boot windows.

 

[Thrackan]

Try finding out if you can set IDE or AHCI mode on your controller. For win 7 it should be AHCI.

 

[Blaaap]

I tried installing with only one of the disks connected. Windows does see the unallocated free disk space, but is unable to create a partition. I can click a "more details" button, this tells that I need to check my BIOS if my RAID controller is enabled, which it is offcourse.

Also yes, I can change the controller mode to AHCI, when I do this I'm unable to even boot from windows 7 dvd which I put on an usb for some reason. The thing is, I do see both HDD's in my BIOS when it is on AHCI mode.

Just to be clear, three days ago, the setup worked perfectly with windows 7 installed. but I decided to re-install windows, during this re-install after I changed the driver at install partition selection and deleted both old partitions, one of the disks dissapeared.

 

[brandonwh64]

does your bios have a raid menu? i know some bioses you can enable raid and when you restart it say something like "hit CTRL-I for raid setup" and then you can setup your raid 0 or 1 or whatever you want. now if your doing raid 0 then yes windows should only see 1 drive and its the size of both drives combined. i have 2x500gb WD blue drives and they show up as 931gb combined in raid 0

 

[Blaaap]

THANK GOD.... I finally managed to enter my RAID BIOS menu.. not by hitting F2 to get in the BIOS or F12 for boot menu.. it seems there is another hidden option to press ESC, when I hit this I was able to access my RAID BIOS menu via CTRL + I..

In the RAID BIOS menu I indeed noticed that RAID 0 was active, but one of the HDD's failed, I deleted the RAID 0 and created a new one

ATM installing windows will update if im succesfull or not, thanks !

edit: bit late but windows 7 is installed, I tried installing using RAID 0 but one of my HDD's errors every single time.. so for now I just installed without raid.