Solved Problem finding a disk to install win10/8 on.

Roe5685 · Mar 22, 2015

i want to install from my boot usb but windows tells me no drives are suitable.
it says it cannot create a partition.
what to do?
what I do now is the screen before use shift + f10 and then diskpart.
if i am lucky by fiddling around i can get a disk to take the new install.
This is not very satisfactory. I have no idea why the fiddling works.
Please educate me.
Roe5685

alphanumeric · Mar 22, 2015

Is your hard rive GPT or MBR? What

http://www.eightforums.com/tutorials/15458-uefi-bootable-usb-flash-drive-create-windows.html
http://www.eightforums.com/tutorials/2299-clean-install-windows-8-a.html
http://www.eightforums.com/tutorial...e-firmware-interface-install-windows-8-a.html
https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/2108-windows-10-dual-boot-windows-7-windows-8-a.html

Roe5685 · Mar 22, 2015

Reply to help on problem finding drive to install win 10 t

The drive I want to install to is MBR. there are several other drives on the machine all GTP. The installation tells me I cannot install to a GTP drive. I did finally get win 10 to install by using diskpart. I cleaned the disk. I converted it to GTP and then back to MBR as a trial and error thing. I did other things. Well it worked. After doing that I was able to install on the MBR disk. That limits me to 2TB for the boot drive and I am not very happy about that either.

I see that I should be able to install to a GTP disk by what you sent me by way of links.

I used a bootable disk Rufus to do the install putting the iso file on the Rufus prepared flash drive.

Where do you think I went wrong?

Roe5685.

alphanumeric · Mar 22, 2015

MBR has a limit on the number of primary partitions you can create. 4 max. That's why I asked, in reference to your "cannot create a partition" comment. I can't make sense out what you've posted so I can't begin to tell you where you went wrong? I have no idea what your trying to accomplish. Lots of missing info and questions that need answers. Clean install? Dual boot with another OS? Number of drives installed and how they are partitioned? What drive and partition your trying to install to?

Roe5685 · Mar 22, 2015

clean install i formatted the ssd 86 Gb drive ( this is a standalone drive not partitioned ) so it has no partitions. It is MBR. It did NOT have the message cannot install. When I tried to install it told me it could not create a partition. I tried using the tools in the install delete format etc but it did no good.
On the same machine there is a raid set showing total space of 8 TB. One partition. Not MBR obviously but GPT. That one when I tried to install told me it could not because it was GPT. I see from what you sent me I should have been able to install to it as there is an efi bios.
But the issue remains: why did I have so much trouble installing to the 58Gb ssd? By the way after fooling around with DiskPart I got a clean install with no problems. I have had this issue with other computers when installing Win10. I am doing something wrong. But what? Usually the hard drives are put on a raid controller and then there are no issues.
Roe5685

Roe5685 · Mar 22, 2015

Problems with Win 10 clean install.

By the way the system specs of the machine are as follows:

brand new video card as the build in video has failed...... EVGA GEForce GT 720

motherboard is several years old with no issues that I know of other than built in video failing P8BWS ( asus ).

xeon E3-1275 cpu 32 gb of Kingston ECC memory. The 84 GB ssd is an older OCZ ssd I had laying around.

I had reformatted and deleted and so forth so it was a clean empty ssd.

This machine is normally used as a hyperviser ( VMware ) and has been faultless with no issues.

I have an identical machine used as a workstation with no issues.

The only other drives on the system are a raid 0 pair of Seagate 4TB each to give 8TB of temporary storage.
There is only the one huge GTP partition of 8 TB. Sure if It was a VMWARE machine I would have to do two sets of 2TB each drive and then use MS spanned volume.

The raid pair is hooked up to the motherboard sata ports. Not to a raid controller in a PCI express slot. The intel raid program was used to make the raid array.

Now that the machine is up we tested it with Passmark. no exceptions. Achieved the predicted overall score of 2500.

We would need a much better vid card and a raid 0 pair of much better SSDs to achieve the 4000 we normally look for. But the machine is not intended for that use.

So the one problem is we lack expertise in getting win 10 iso to see our disks where we want to install as installable.

alphanumeric · Mar 23, 2015

Hard to say what went wrong as I was not there to see what you saw. I've never had issues like that with blank un partitioned drives. I've done several installs on brand new out of the box SSD's. Some UEFI some not. Windows always created all the necessary system partitions automatically. No muss no fuss. I do believe all my installs are GPT. Now on reinstalls I just delete the system partitions and Windows partition and let Windows create them again. My Data partition I don't touch. I've only done a couple of Windows 10 installs, most of mine are Windows 8 installs. I didn't notice any difference in the two as far as installing goes.

Roe5685 · Mar 23, 2015

Well yes that was my experience too. I have to agree with you. So sudddenly a new ball game where:
GPU not work at all and
without a lot of attention the MRB not work AND as you point out it not make the tiny system partitions at the beginning of the disk.
But even so you end up after fidding with the diskpart commands with a workable computer but NOT on a GPU large drive.
So I need to reexamine the method.
I use Rufus to make the bootable flash drive with the Ten Iso.
then on the beginning sceen i have to choose the drive to install on.
as these are fresh installs i always delete all partitions and all data on the chosen drive or raid array.
What would you have me try as an alternative to this method?
I would like to put the boot and system onto the 8TB GPU raid 0 array.
Right now the Rufus tells me it cannot to GPU disks.

alphanumeric · Mar 23, 2015

I personally don't bother with Rufus. I just do this.
select disk #
clean
create partition primary
format fs=fat32 quick
active
assign
list volume
exit
Then copy the ISO files to the thumb drive.
It's option two here, http://www.eightforums.com/tutorials/15458-uefi-bootable-usb-flash-drive-create-windows.html. I've had no problems doing UEFI installs with thumb drives created this way.
Is this an actual RAID array or just drives connected to a RAID controller? If its actually a RAID array that may add a wrinkle to installing to it, driver issue maybe.
Where did you obtain your install media? You can get Windows 8 here, Create installation media for Windows 8.1 - Windows Help
Are you having the same issues with Windows 8 and Windows 10?

Mark Phelps · Mar 23, 2015

Roe5685: I had much the same experience as you when I recently went to do a clean reinstall of Win8.1 64-bit on a blank SSD. I couldn't create a partition. Then, I stumbled upon the solution, as follows:
1) Boot windows installation from USB drive
2) Press Shift+F10
3) In console type diskpart.exe and press enter. In this program execute following:
select disk=0. Disk 0 is your destination drive, so be careful, all information on this drive will be removed.
create partition primary size=xxx, where xxx – is the size of new partition
select partition=1
active
format fs=ntfs quick
assign
exit, now you have bootable drive C

At this point, you have a partition created on your drive, so when you reboot and restart the installation, you should be able use that partition.

Also, make sure you have no other drives connected during the installation -- I had to disconnect all my other drives to get this to work.

Roe5685 · Mar 23, 2015

More on Finding Disk to Install Win10

I want to thank everyone. It would appear that you can use diskpart per Mark Phelps or the method of alphanumeric.

Following Alphanumeric's most valuable advice I finally got the ten install to do an MBR install. I perceived my many mistakes. I was then able on the next round to do the op system and boot onto a 8TB raid 0 from the MB set of two 4TB hard drives (which uses Intel softwear ). Wow! I am writing from that boot. Disk speed seems fine. I see no issues.
I can later decrease the size of the boot partition.
A key stumbling block was the use of the word "new" in the install. That needs to be used to create the several partitions. I found out how to use "New" by trial and error once Alphanumeric put me onto it.

I ended up with C: as my boot drive but along with several other real drives the D: drive as "System Reserved 316MB free out of 349MB." What is this? Can I delete it?

Roe5685

alphanumeric · Mar 23, 2015

System Reserved is a hidden system partition created by Windows during the install. My advice is to just leave it be, its only small. UEFI installs will add a similar EFI hidden partition. I just leave them alone. You can get rid of them but its hardly worth the effort. If you don't do it right you'll end up with a no boot scenario.

Roe5685 · Mar 23, 2015

I want to thank Mark Phelps and with due respect profusely thank alphanumeric. His deep insights were most helpful.

In summary for a GPU install on a very large harddrive or raid 0 the alphanumeric tips and references have you manually prepare the flash drive. You might not get it right the first time if you have preconceived notions like I did. However when you boot up the target machine you will get the EFI boot option. If not go back and again prepare the flash drive.

The next critical step is to again follow Alpahnumeric's tips and references but most important is to use the "New" command in the install screen to make the several partitions. If "New" is not in bold try delete and then try "New" again. It is possible to do an MBR without using "New" so you must recall "New".

Thanks again. I am marking this as solved.

alphanumeric · Mar 24, 2015

:thumb:

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