I Dears,
i am installing Vista on Toshiba Qosmio G20
But it did not find any hard disk on installation. there are 2 hard disk.

Vista is working fine if i wana use but i want to formate this laptop.
Any Help???

Dani AI

Generated

Quick, practical triage for (and expanding on ’s hint):

First step: check the laptop firmware (BIOS/UEFI) to confirm both drives are visible. If the firmware does not list a drive the problem is hardware or a connector issue; swapping a drive into a known-good adaptor or external USB enclosure can confirm that without reformatting the machine. If the firmware does see both drives, the problem is at the controller/partition level rather than a dead disk.

Two non-destructive approaches that often fix a “no drives found” installer message:

  • Temporarily change the SATA mode in firmware from AHCI/RAID to IDE/Compatibility so the installer can detect disks. Exercise caution: switching modes can make an existing Windows install unbootable, so an image/backup is recommended before changing firmware settings.
  • Boot a live utility (for example, GParted or any current Linux live image) to inspect partition tables. Delete any leftover RAID or dynamic-volume metadata and create a fresh MBR (or GPT if doing UEFI install) so the Windows installer sees the disk as unallocated space.

Driver-focused notes (complements ): if keeping the controller mode, use the exact storage/controller driver that matches the Vista installer bitness (32 vs 64). Place extracted driver files on removable media and use the installer’s driver-load option, or inject storage drivers into the install image beforehand. Always keep a full backup before wiping partitions or changing firmware settings, and ignore any unrelated links in thread replies such as the one from .

Recommended Answers

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is it a sata hard Drive that is split into two partitions
i would just go to the manufacturer website and get the
drivers for the controller card and or chipset so when windows
askes if you have any 3rd party drivers you say yes and use them and it should make the drive come up

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