There's no way he could have physically connected a SATA drive to ATA/IDE interface. If BIOS recognizes it, that means that drive is not partitioned (yes that means even if there's only one partition). What has to be done is to connect it to a computer that already has an OS and make at least one partition which is primary and active and formatted to NTFS file system. Another option is to boot your computer with Hirens Boot disk and do the same thing from there. HDDs usually come formatted but in case it was meant or used on some other machine, like MAC. game console or CCTV, it could be in some other format, unrecognized by windows setup. All that under condition that it is in working order. More than once I found a brand new HDD that was DOA, to say nothing about used ones.