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Topic: Windows 7 unable to see the GParted formatted partition

Hi there,

I had a windows 7 on  a 320 GB Western Digital SATA hard drive. I wanted to reinstall windows on this partition and used GParted to format it to a NTFS. After formatting when I try to install Windows 7 is unable to locate the Hard Drive. Subsequently I used the WD utilities to check the drive and it is intact. Also tried the HDD on another Laptop and still windows 7 could not locate the drive. Understand that this something that I did with the GParted as Windows install DVD could see the boot partition. Any help is highly appreciated as this is for my friend who is unable to buy a new laptop.


Regards

Sunny

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Re: Windows 7 unable to see the GParted formatted partition

This is probably because the installer doesn't find any unallocated space to install the o.s. It is better to leave the installer create itself the filesystem (and eventually the partitioning).

This link points to a tutorial "How To Install Windows 7 from USB or DVD as a Beginner)".
I found there the following:

No drives are found

If we get a message that "no drives are found", it can mean three things:

Windows doesn't have drivers for the particular motherboard's SATA controller
The hard drive isn't correctly connected to the motherboard or the power supply
The hard drive doesn't work
Install Windows 7 from USB or DVD, Step By Step 21

The most common scenario is that Windows needs external SATA drivers to recognize the hard drive. This will usually happen with laptops, rather than with desktop PCs.

We will find those drivers on the manufacturer's website for the laptop or the motherboard, usually as SATA or SATA AHCI.

Please, check the entire tutorial and screenshots to see if it matches what you encounter.

*** It is highly recommended to backup any important files before doing resize/move operations. ***