Screwed up rapiddrive and OKR by deleting partitions.

I screwed up the hard-drives in my IdeaPad Y580 by deleting the existing partitions during a fresh windows 7 install.

My windows 8 upgrade got messed up so I decided to just do a clean format and reinstall of windows 7 so that I could upgrade from a clean system. So, from my USB setup disk, I deleted all the partitions and was left with one drive. Windows refused to install to that drive, at times saying it couldn't create a system partition, and at other times just saying it failed.

I have the model which has a HDD and SSD, which are combined using RapidDrive. I obviously didn't correctly separate the drives before all this, which is why I was left with a single disk in the windows setup instead of two.

I fixed it using diskpart, I thought I should write up my solution in case anyone else does the same thing.

I separated the drives and installed Windows on the SSD. I haven't tried to set up RapidDrive or OKR so I don't know what this method will leave you with for that. That being said, this is what worked for me:


boot up using the USB setup disk. When it loads, press shift+F10 to bring up the command prompt window.

Type diskpart.

Type list disk -- you should see the two drives in the computer, and the USB drive. Disk 0 should be the SSD, and disk 1 should be the HDD. Check the sizes to be sure. Now type:

> select disk 0
> clean
> select disk 1
> clean

Now you've cleaned the disks -- they should both show up in the setup. But there's more to do:

> select disk 0
> create partition primary size=100
> list partition

You've created what will be the 100MB system partition. When you list the partitions, that should be the only one, and it should be parition 1.

> select partition 1
> format quick

> create partition primary
> list partition

Now you should have a 100MB formatted partition, and another RAW partition. Format the second partition:

> select partition 2
> format quick

Now you can partition and format your HDD:

> select disk 1
> create partition primary
> select partition 1
> format quick

I just made it into one large partition.
Now, set the system partition as active (I didn't actually have to create it as an actual system partition, simple making it a primary partition worked for me during setup).

> select disk 0
> select partition 1
> active

Now exit diskpart and the cmd prompt:

> exit
> exit

proceed with setup. The partitions should show up when it asks you where to install windows, and the Disk 0 Parition 1 should show up as SYSTEM. Select Disk 0 Partition 2 and click next.

 

Everything you've done after clearing the disk partitions was unnecessary and would have been done during the installation of Windows.

 

I've read that a lot, but it wasn't true for me. Windows would not install for anything less that everything I did here.

Whether I left them with no partitions, created raw partitions in diskpart, or created partitions in the windows setup, it refused to install.

even if I left out the last step, setting the system partition as active (everywhere I looked people were saying setting anything as active is unnecessary), setup wouldn't touch it.

 

Did you try removing the HDD before installing? That should usually solve the problem.

 

I did not.

I would rather use diskpart then have to open my notebook though, maybe some would disagree. Anyway, I only posted this to add to add a solution to what is out there already. I'm not saying this is the only or best way to fix the problem, but it's another thing someone can try if they wind up in similar circumstances.

 

If you want to invest in a partition recovery software like "paragon" you might restore your deleted partitions.

 

These aren't disk hard drives, they are SSD hard drives. I doubt partition recovery software could help:S