Drive detected by BIOS but not by Windows installer

AlbertLionheart

Posts: 1,997   +3
Any ideas on this anyone?
A SATA 2.5" drive has a corrupted OS on it and I want to format it and then reinstall a fresh copy of Windows.
The drive is detected by the BIOS but does not show up as an available drive in the install routine (no drives found). I
If I remove the drive and connect it as a SATA drive to a desktop (so I can format it that way), it again shows up on the BIOS but is not available as a drive in Windows Explorer.
This drive has been pre-repaired by PCWorld - I wonder if they did anything odd to it?
 
After connecting the drive to your desktop, please go to control panel > admin tools > computer management > Disk Management.

If your drive shows up there, it mean physically it is ok, just that its partition tables has gone wonky.

You can simply delete the existing partition tables there, and re-create new one and format it. Hopefully that will work and solve your issue.
 
Thanks - it appears that PC (spit) World used some sort of bootable partition and I was able to clear it as you suggest
Many thanks!
 
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