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I've got one drive that's had Windows 7 for a while. I just bought an SSD drive, and I'd like to dual boot for a while. I've tried installing with formatting the SSD drive (in Windows) and make it a Primary Active partition. I've also tried installing by deleting the partition and leaving it unallocated. I tried creating a Primary partition (but not active). In all cases, it doesn't show up as an option when trying to install Windows.

When I boot from the CD, the only disk it shows is the disk for my already existing drive with Windows 7 already installed.

I tried the steps from this thread (Can't install Windows 7 on SSD drive), but when I perform "list disk" from diskpart, it still only shows 1 disk--the already existing Windows 7 disk.

Finally, I tried changing the boot up disk to the SSD drive (making it first on the list in the BIOS by setting boot priority), rebooted to the Windows disk, and still, the only disk that shows up is the original Win7 installed disk.

Another interesting note--my new 2TB storage drive doesn't show up in the list in the Windows install either.

How can I get my SSD drive to show up in the Windows install?

Another VERY interesting note...I've never seen this before. I disconnected my disk with Windows 7 already installed so that it would have to find my SSD drive, and it didn't. It says "No drives were found. Click Load Driver to provide a mass storage driver for installation." ???

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  • Does the SSD show in the bios?
    – Moab
    Mar 30, 2012 at 1:54
  • @Moab, yes, it shows in the BIOS. I reordered it in the BIOS to be the boot drive, saved and exited, and it rebooted to that disk (said disk failure b/c no windows on it). Good, so I rebooted to windows disk, and it still only shows first drive.
    – thephatp
    Mar 30, 2012 at 2:05
  • Make and model of PC?
    – Moab
    Mar 30, 2012 at 15:52

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In case anyone else has this problem, check to make sure you do not have your drives plugged into the eSATA ports.

Thanks to this thread for pointing out to check that.

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  • You're not an idiot, I've spent way too much time debugging similar problems (Did you know USB drives fit in Ethernet ports?) Thanks for coming back and answering your own question! This is considered good practice per Can I answer my own questions; hopefully this will be helpful to others in the future. Mar 30, 2012 at 19:35

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