Win10 install couldn't see SSD until I deleted partition from another PC?!

[Ichinisan]

WHY did I have to go through this?!

I quickly threw together parts from my nephew's old system for a testing rig.

• Antec 900 case
• Thermaltake 6XX-watt modular power supply
• Gigabyte P55-UD3R (1.0) motherboard
• Intel Core i5 CPU (don't know exactly which one...it's the lowest-end i5 part from the day i5 launched with second-gen i7s and P55 chipset)
• 4GB Corsair Dominator XMS3 DDR3-1600 RAM
• PNY NVIDIA 9800GT EE video card ("Energy Efficient" with no PSU connection, 1GB version)
• Kingston SSDnow 64GB SSD (an old one)

I did *not* want to remove this drive because it was semi-permanently mounted with that 3M double-sided mounting tape stuff. Removing it was a huge hassle and I had to get pretty rough with it.

While the drive was still mounted, I tried *everything* and the Windows 10 installer just would not see the drive. There were no partitions/drives to select or delete. There was no unpartitioned space either. The list was completely empty, as if I needed to install an "F6" driver from a floppy disk.

• All SATA controllers were set to AHCI mode.
• I tried moving the SATA connection around to different SATA ports and controllers.
• I tried overriding boot order to make sure it was booting to my Win10 USB install.
• I downloaded the Microsoft Media Creation Tool and created an install DVD, which I used with an external USB optical drive (overriding boot order again).

There was definitely something on the drive from previous experimentation. It would sometimes try to boot a Windows 7 bootloader with options like Startup Repair. At some point that drive had been momentarily used as an SSD cache drive for a Marvell HyperDuo controller. That might have been the last thing done with it, but I'm not sure because I had messed with a lot of drives a month ago...

Clearly I was getting nowhere using this drive in this rig. It was a lot of effort to rip the drive out. The drive had originally included a USB enclosure (meant to assist with migrating your HDD contents to the SSD). I put the drive in that enclosure, connected it to another PC, and used Computer Management > Disk management to delete the single ~60GB "RAW" partition that it was finally able to see.

Put it back into this test rig and...

The Win10 installer can finally see the drive and the unallocated space. The rest of the install went smoothly.

WHY DID I HAVE TO DO THAT? The Windows installer is supposed to list partitions so I can delete them from there...right? It's maddening.

 

[VirtualLarry]

WHY did I have to go through this?!
WHY DID I HAVE TO DO THAT? The Windows installer is supposed to list partitions so I can delete them from there...right? It's maddening.

Why didn't you just boot the Win10 install disc, hit SHIFT+F10 to open a command prompt, type "DISKPART", "LIST DISK", "SELECT DISK 0", "CLEAN ALL", "EXIT", "EXIT", then click "Refresh" on the disk/partition installation screen?

 

[Ichinisan]

Why didn't you just boot the Win10 install disc, hit SHIFT+F10 to open a command prompt, type "DISKPART", "LIST DISK", "SELECT DISK 0", "CLEAN ALL", "EXIT", "EXIT", then click "Refresh" on the disk/partition installation screen?

Better question: Why should anyone ever have to do that?

I was already on a GUI screen that was supposed to list drives and partitions so I can create/delete them.

Not sure why I should assume the partition is a problem. I was thinking something was wrong with the SATA controllers. No drives were listed and it was acting like I needed to load a driver.

Terrible UI.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Better question: Why should anyone ever have to do that?

Because... Microsoft?

I was already on a GUI screen that was supposed to list drives and partitions so I can create/delete them.

If you boot UEFI, and existing partitions are MBR, or vice-versa, this can happen. Need to do a "clean".

 

[Ichinisan]

Why didn't you just boot the Win10 install disc, hit SHIFT+F10 to open a command prompt, type "DISKPART", "LIST DISK", "SELECT DISK 0", "CLEAN ALL", "EXIT", "EXIT", then click "Refresh" on the disk/partition installation screen?

Better question: Why should anyone ever have to do that?

Because... Microsoft?

:thumbsup:

/rant

 

[XavierMace]

Or they're trying to prevent you from accidentally wiping out a non-windows install? If it was a "RAW" format partition, it clearly wasn't a regular Windows partition.

Windows has ALWAYS been bad about managing non-Windows formatted partitions.

 

[Ichinisan]

Or they're trying to prevent you from accidentally wiping out a non-windows install? If it was a "RAW" format partition, it clearly wasn't a regular Windows partition.

Windows has ALWAYS been bad about managing non-Windows formatted partitions.

I would say, if an installed copy of Windows can see/manage the partition, the Windows installer should be able to. It's pretty stupid to have a partition manager that can't view/delete/manage partitions (or even indicate that a drive is detected).

 

[XavierMace]

An installed copy of windows has access to additional drivers.

 

[Ichinisan]

An installed copy of windows has access to additional drivers.

Why should it have more? The installed copy of Windows only has drivers from the original disc install.

This issue had nothing to do with drivers.

 

[XavierMace]

You connected it to another computer to blow out the non-Windows partition. I would be shocked if you managed to have a Windows 7 install running with only preload drivers.

 

[Ichinisan]

You connected it to another computer to blow out the non-Windows partition. I would be shocked if you managed to have a Windows 7 install running with only preload drivers.

I hooked it up to a Windows 10 system.

I have never needed to install an "F6" driver during a Windows install and I also didn't have to this time. That Win10 system was using the same SATA controller + HDD drivers it had immediately after the install. They came from the install disc.

This issue was completely unrelated to drivers. The same install disk was able to see the drive after the partition was deleted.

Windows needs a driver when it can't communicate with the drive or the drive controller. It doesn't need a driver to view/delete partitions on a drive it can communicate with. An unrecognized partitioning method or file system should at least show something. A drive with unpartitioned space or some kind of "unknown" partition. I suspect Windows was deliberately hiding/ignoring that partition. Very annoying.