Post deleted by DavidFinbarr

Can you remove HD from booting in the menu?

Have you also tried installing sata drive with system running, then rebooting?

Edited by deleted (Mon 09-Apr-12 16:33:10)

In reply to a post by andygegg:

But does it and how can I fix this?

What happens in the recovery environment does not always translate to what is happening when you boot up the OS.

Nevertheless, you fix it by following my instructions above This disk has just been formatted, correct? Therefore there is no data on it you need? If so run the diskpart clean command, this will strip the disk of partitions. Therefore windows cannot give it a drive letter because there is no partition to give it to!

In reply to a post by DavidFinbarr:

Have you also tried installing sata drive with system running, then rebooting?

Hehe, I was going to suggest this originally too. But given it's a brand new system it's probably not a good idea to resort to hot plugging the drive

I'd still do it myself though!

I've forgotten what a new system is like.

Mines like Trigger's broom, had it years, but replacement HDs, MoBos, Cases, etc, etc.

I had to look that one up http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pbha4XclSMU

Edited by deleted (Mon 09-Apr-12 16:48:44)

Just another titbit - I tried booting with a Live Ubuntu disk and it can see the HDD, read files, etc.
Maybe this is the solution - teach the wife to use Ubuntu!

I recently did a restore from backup and Windows was assinging B as boot drive. I had to boot into a PE environment, Windows 7 command prompt may be similar and use the DISKPART command to re-assign my Hard disk B drive to C then it would boot. I also have a Linux restore boot disk and it correctly identified the hard disk as C not B. Windows is funny. See if you can use Diskpart, it's a bit fiddly as you have to select the disk and partition then re-label it.

OP seems reluctant to use diskpart for some reason despite me mentioning giving it a try even from the start... It would certainly stop the disk being assigned a letter in WinRE.

Strictly speaking, the disk should be cleaned and formatted on a Windows 7 installation anyway as best practice, due to the slight changes in the NTFS file system specification over the versions, assuming the old PC wasn't running Windows 7.

Edited by Pipexer (Mon 09-Apr-12 20:32:39)

Could OP could try putting HD back in old system, deleting volume, then try it back in new system? Dunno if that would work.