Win 7 - Second SATA or IDE disc unaccessible

[eskimo44]

Hi guys, I've been looking for a solution for my problem for the last 8h... Hope you can help.

I'm running Windows 7 Ultimate with Gigabyte EP45-DS3
My primary disk is SATA WD Caviar Black 1 TB with two partitions and it works perfectly.

I got ahold of two internal discs - SATA WD Caviar SE 200GB and IDE Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 160GB.

I started with Seagate on IDE. Attached it as master, changing my dvd to slave. All jumpers OK, devices connected properly, bios configured - can see them all.
Windows boots as normal, dvd works ok but the disc is not showing in Explorer.

Checked Device Manager - it's there OK, went to Disk Management - in the bottom section it shows the disc with two partitions BUT without letters. Since I cared little about the data on the disc I removed both volumes and attempted to create New Simple Volume with one partition, drive letter F and quick format to NTFS. After few minutes it came up with "The operation failed to complete because the Disk Management console view is not up to date...".

I checked device manager - new device appeared - Unknown Device. At the same time the disc is still showing correctly under Disk Drives.
Tried updating unknown device's driver using "C:\Windows\System32\DriverStore\FileRepository\disk.inf_x86_neutral_b431b61a11f8df6c" -
"Windows was unable to install unknown device", tried automatic update as well - no joy.

Went back to Disk Management, new partition is now showing in blue but no letter, first i tried "Mark partition as active" - that went ok, then "Change drive letter..." - got the message again - "The operation failed..."
Tried formatting - "An unexpected error has occurred..."
All i can do is to "Delete volume" and try again which i did like a million times with different letters, with and without format etc.

Then i tried with the second disc (SATA Seagate) which I previously formatted using Win 7 installer - exactly the same thing.

Both discs were tested on another computer...
I tried formatting using Win 7 installer which can see the discs and accepts both of them for installation...
I tried different cables, different slots...
I tried updating chipset driver, different bios...
I also tried using diskpart - at one stage I can see the partition but I cant assign the letter to it. It never shows as volume, only as disc.

It's weird that Unknown Device in Device Manager shows up everytime right after attempting to create New Simple Volume and disappears when i delete that volume from Disk Management...

I really want to avoid reinstallation of the system - any ideas?

Thanks

 

[I.M.O.G.]

The first thing you often need to do in disk management is "initialize".
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc771486.aspx

What you did in device management is not necessary, and I'd start fresh... Delete the entry for the disk there, then select the computer name in that window, then go to action>scan for hardware changes.

Once that completes, open disk management or refresh the view if its already opened. Then delete any existing volumes and/or right click and select initialize, then create your volumes, and format.

It sounds like you covered a lot, so the above likely doesn't apply exactly to you, but with the information at the following link, you should have everything necessary to make this work:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc771607.aspx

Let us know if you get anywhere. As with anything that might involve data, backup first if you might nuke something you don't want to lose.