Windows 7 doesnt see my SSD=... How do i instal windows 7 on my SSD...

Im getting so frustrated... I hate how PC's when it comes to hard drives are always so picky.. I remember the switch from IDE to SATA HDDs caused a lot of issues and installing windows or what not was a pain in the ***..

Im having the same problem on my new build... I have a 240GB silicon power SSD, and I cannot get windows see the SSD... If I go to my computer it sees the regular drive, but not the SSD I installed all the chipset drivers from the gigabyte Z97 sniper CD, I have no yellow !! in device manager, in fact device manager sees my SSD, intel rapid storage program sees my ssd, the bios sees it.. but it isn't under my computer and when I try to install windows 7 it doesn't see it either..

Ive been trying to fix this for like 8 hours today and im going ape #$#$ crazy, also I should note disk management does see the drive as well, but I cannot format it.. it doesn't give me the option to format the drive

PC specs are Intel 4790
16gb G.skill ripjaws
Gigabyte z97 g1 sniper
R9 290 Radeon
Silicon power 240gb SSD, and my old 640 Blue caviar drive
EVGA G2 750w psu

Does disk management give you the option to initialize the drive? Right click on the entry in disk management and see what the options are.

No it wouldn't let me do anything to it.. it was all greyed out.. I had to download a 3rd party program and format the drive NTFS and then windows saw the drive and I was finally able to install my SSD on it.

BTW the read and write speeds seem a little low to me.. I realize the Silicone Power SSD says UP TO 550/500 but im only getting 480/280.. Not that im really complaining it was only $80 for the 240gb version and these speeds are like 3x faster then my current HDD lol

You needed to initialize and format the drive as you found. This is common on ssds. I have never seen a winows not be able to do this (I'm talking an already installed windows - computer management, NOT when you are selecting a drive upon installation).

As far as performance goes, are you using atto? That should show the results you are looking for. Other programs will not.

Hopefully that's a solid ssd. Never heard of it before....

Cnaydmancangt, I too have seen windows 7 randomly grey out some of my drives before. My solution is to use diskpart through the command line. It always works through there.

...or re-install windows. That also usually works

Sounds like the BIOS failed to detect your drive and you need to reconnect the drive.

When in Windows Computer/Disk Manager, it gives you the option to initialize the new drive. It won't format unless it's initialized.

Audioaficionado said:

When in Windows Computer/Disk Manager, it gives you the option to initialize the new drive. It won't format unless it's initialized.

Click to expand...

Yes, I knew that from the get go.

RJARRRPCGP said:

Sounds like the BIOS failed to detect your drive and you need to reconnect the drive.

Click to expand...

No, it wasn't that I already mentioned the bios was reading it, windows device manager was seeing it, and disk manage was as well I just couldn't partition it.. It needed to be partitioned in order for my computer and the W7 install to see it..

Cnaydmancangt said:

No, it wasn't that I already mentioned the bios was reading it, windows device manager was seeing it, and disk manage was as well I just couldn't partition it.. It needed to be partitioned in order for my computer and the W7 install to see it..

Click to expand...

If the installer can't see it, it means a bad drive, ATA cable, ATA port or BIOS bug.

no it means it needed to be formatted.. uhg once it was formatted it was able to see it.. you do know when windows 7 came out SSD's didn't exist right ?

RJARRRPCGP said:

If the installer can't see it, it means a bad drive, ATA cable, ATA port or BIOS bug.

Click to expand...

We have already determined he did not Initialize the drive. Once he initialized he could format and/or install windows.


Windows 7 knowing or not knowing about ssd has nothing to do with initialization of an ssd. in windows 8.1 it would need initialized before it would be recognized....same with a hdd

I just got a brand new SSD and installed it in Win7. It needed to be initialized like any other HD.

Maybe I'm about to ask a stupid question but don't you need to set the BIOS to AHCI mode in order to install win7 on SSD? I myself once shed some 30ml sweat because I forgot to change it while installing a new SSD

You can install W7 under IDE mode with an SSD. You should not do that however as performance will suffer on the drive.

The issue was that he did not initialize the drive before attempting to install windows.

I had the same problem but a try with a clean iso of windows 8 worked. After that my win7 disk was recognized. I would also suggest using a usb2 port if installing using a flash drive