GPT and Using my SSD?

[trainspotting]

I bought an SSD to use as my boot drive in a fresh install of W7. When I first installed it as a secondary it asked me about formatting. I did NOT write down what it was asking me (stupid, stupid) but now I have an SSD in GPT format that I cannot convert to anything useful. I have tried several aftermarket applications with no luck. I want to convert it MBR so I can use it. Please help (and forgive my ignorance).

 

[DesiPower]

never had to deal with this issue but if you insert the OS installation disk and start from scratch, wont it provide you on option to delete everything inducing the GPT part?

 

[mv2devnull]

I have SSD with GPT as my Windows 7 "boot" drive as well. I assume that your motherboard does not support UEFI boot?

While the SSD is as secondary drive, Drive Management of Windows surely allows repartitioning. There might even be a "Convert to MBR" option. If not, then command line tools like diskpart surely let do the raw.


Plan B: boot a Linux Live distro, overwrite couple first sectors of the drive with dd, and then write a fresh MBR-style partition table. But beware tools like dd, for they have immense (destructive) power. 🙂

 

[trainspotting]

When attempting to start the installation process, Windows messages me unable to proceed. Drive Management does not display the drive. I have looked everywhere in my boards BIOS for "enable UHCI". It is an MSI 890FXA-GD70. Having this function seems to be the simplest solution?

 

[greenhawk]

When attempting to start the installation process, Windows messages me unable to proceed. Drive Management does not display the drive.

that happens when the drive is not reconized. Either you are on a sata port that windows needs a driver for or the bios is set to run the drive in a mode that also needs a driver loaded before windows installation can see the drive.