Hard drive not always detected

[jukappa]

I have a seagate 500g sata hard drive. Now Im having problems at the installation process of picking where I want to install windows 7 to. Sometimes the hard drive isnt recognized, sometimes it is. Then sometimes I get an error saying that "windows cant be installed to the disk ensure that the disk controller is enabled in bios". And other times I can start installing it but it constantly stays at 0%... This is just getting really irritating and I'm not sure what the problem is here...Any help would be greatly appreciated.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B005CT5...00_s00_i00

[mwhals]

Is the SATA ports set as AHCI. Also, you may need to tell Windows 7 to loads drivers for your SATA controller during the install process.

[jukappa]

I set it to AHCI and every attempt at installing I have been stuck at "setup is starting" screen. Could it be a problem with the actual hard drive itself? Like I said sometimes In BIOS it doesn't recognize a port being used at all by the hard drive.

[MathieuB]

Try connecting it to a different SATA port on your motherboard, see if that makes a difference.

[mwhals]

Try plugging it into a different SATA port. I had to do that when I installed Windows 7 on a computer I built, except it was my DVD drive that I had to move.

I also had to go into drive setup from within the Windows 7 setup.

[jukappa]

That was my first troubleshooting remedy. Ive done this multiple times. It seems that switching it to a random port works temporarily for a couple resets and then poof the MOBO no longer detects the hard drive (while the optical drive never has an issue with this). Even so, every time I've came to the actual installation, it never got past 0% and it was stuck in that installing phase indefinitely.

[mwhals]

A common Fix to the problems similar to yours is to change the SATA setting in BIOS to "compatible" instead of "enhanced."

[jukappa]

I tried that nothing works. At this point I cant get it past the indefinite "setup is starting..." screen. I think I will try it with another hard drive. This one was making that bad clicking noise before so it could be junk.

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Ok oddly after about 10 minutes in the setup is starting screen it loaded past it, I believe the settings are back at ide enhanced however. and I made it to the part where windows is installing. And Its actually increasing in percentages... So I guess until further notice things are working. Thanks for the help guys

Spoke too soon, shortly after I got an error saying windows cannot install required files. Files does not exist... Ugh what gives.

[Kaid]

Other causes could be the drive overheating or a broken SATA cable.

[jukappa]

Other causes could be the drive overheating or a broken SATA cable.

turns out it was just simply a bad hard drive.