M6600 - 512e HDD - CANNOT TO CLEAN OS INSTALL

I have literally researched for 4 hours with this new Advanced format drives. all the fixing guides are when you are running windows. I have formatted the drives and hence I cannot access the os...

It seems like that Dell is transitioning completely into these 512e drives from 2012. PLEASE HELP... What can I do to clean install on these drives on RAID 0?

Thank you very much for your response in advance.

 

So you managed to solve this problem?(assuming there are newer posts from you in the Owners thread)
I remember the orange paper that came with the laptop, informing about these 512e hard drives, but I didnt pay much attention to it and just used the Dell Windows 7 DVD to reinstall the OS on the same drive and everything went fine
however I will soon put an SSD in the laptop and am planning to format everything and delete all the partitions on the HDD to use it for media and some rarely used programs and I am just wondering if there is something I must know about these drives before doing that

 

Yea I got the problem solved. It took me some serious googling.

Anyways, you have to use the SP1 of windows 7 reinstallation disk. That didnt come with mine, so I used the older non SP Win 7 disk from my old Precision. (yes i think it is legal), which didnt work. if it didnt come with your system, request one to be sent.

There is some program integrated into SP1 about intel rapid storage tech or some sort that gives support for the 512e drives.

Yea that orange paper was ominous from the beginning..

 

thanks for the quick reply
I did some quick research before posting and suspected that you didnt have an SP1 disk and that was the problem,but decided to ask anyway since you had done a lot of research
as for using a Win7 copy from another laptop, I believe its legal as long as its only on one PC at a time, although perhaps it has to be from the same OEM too

 

yeah it was the dell oem disk.

As for 512e, I do not see any other ways I could have work around it. I am still confused though about that really makes 512e better in real life.

 

same here,I still dont even know if I have it(the Dell detector program isnt working properly),but will definitely explore it further once I have some spare time
on a side note, since you are an NBR veteran , can you tell me of a better way to find threads like this? Searching "precision" as a title brings 15 pages of results and yet even M6600 Owner's thread isnt there. And I am that kind of a person who likes to have everything as close to perfection as possible, so even (potential) minor issues with my beloved laptop are important for me

 

If you look at the Hard drive, the cover should have a logo for advanced format drive. See the physical HDD.

i am not sure about searching. There is actually guides for you to do searching. But try Google method of searching in specific website. Though I cant be a huge help cause I am not good with the searching...

The odds are, if you hvae problems either create a new thread, if you think it is really unique, or ask in the owners lounge.

 

will look on the HDD then, once I open up the back to install the SSD and also will look for search guides, thanks for the tip