Toshiba laptop hard drives

[lan101]

I have a Toshiba laptop that windows 7 dvd installation is telling me no drives are available. The odd thing is...is in the Bios it reads the original Toshiba drive and a spare samsung drive. These are sata drives.

I was thinking maybe the motherboard controller was bad, but now I'm not sure. Any suggestions to try.

Thanks,

Landon

 

[Vicenarian]

Is the one drive a DVD/CD drive perhaps?

Maybe check BIOS SATA mode? (AHCI, RAID, IDE, etc...)

And/or maybe this is one of those DVD drives that has a built-in SSD?

 

[SmithFamilyDesigns]

Check sata mode for compatibilty on the sata controller, otherwise download the chipset drivers and choose "have disk" in the setup (flash drives are great for this)

 

[lan101]

Thanks for the suggestions.

UPDATE:

I used a different windows 7 disc and was able to get it to run through the windows installation.

However upon a restart, the drive became unreadable again.

I went back through the windows 7 installation and it could not find a drive. So it's almost like the motherboard reads it half the time and half the time it doesn't.

The weird thing is, it always ask for the hdd password when first turning it on.

Bizarre!

Thanks,

Landon

 

[PR Tech]

Have you had a chance to run any diagnostics on the hard drive yet? Also, can you boot to UBCD4Win? Does UBCD4Win recognize the primary hard drive?

 

[lan101]

Another Update:

"Windows cannot be installed to this disk. This computer's hardware may not support booting to this disk. Ensure that the disk's controller is enabled in the computer's BIOS menu."

This is what I get when the SATA controller mode is in "AHCI"

The only other option to put it in is "Compatibility."

When I put it in that mode, I am able to get the windows installer to work. It will copy windows files and then expand them. After this, it needs to restart the computer. It then refuses to read it from there.

I have tried switching modes back and forth after the install to no avail.

 

[lan101]

PR:

No I have not ran that, but I tried a working samsung 200gb and the windows installation freezes every time before it gets completely loaded.

 

[lake54]

You mentioned a HDD password being asked every time the machine is turned on - can you disable this and try booting without the prompt coming up?

James

 

[Joseph@Dagon]

Model number of laptop?
Have you checked the Toshiba website to see if its compatable with Win7?
You might have to do a simple BIOS update to have it compatible.
If still not working, dock the HDDs into a working PC and run HDTUNE.
If diag runs fine and you still have the same issues, download the appropriate drivers and merge them to WIN7 DVD using Nlite. WIN7 Installation will then find your HDD guaranteed.

 

[lan101]

From what I understand it is fairly tough to remove the password from the drive. I believe there are a few pieces of software that can do it. It is definitely compatible with windows 7 because it had windows 7 on it before.

The model number is:

Toshiba Satellite L305D-S5974

came with windows 7 home premium 32 bit



Meanwhile my spare hard drive that I did have appears to be freezing up my one pc when i plug it in via USB. I have ordered a brand new 250GB Toshiba hard drive. When I get that, that should totally rule out if its a HD issue I hope.

 

[lake54]

Isn't the HDD password set in the BIOS? Check under the advanced settings or User settings (depends what BIOS type it is). Try to clear it for now, and turn it off.

James