Precision T7600, Hard drive not detected by Windows installer

Speedstep,

I tried to get the F6 drivers, maybe I did it improperly... I plugged in my USB of drivers, started up my Win7 installer, chose Custom installation, no drive is recognized so I clicked load drivers... and once it scanned my resources and when that failed when I clicked the direct folder it tells me "No Signed device drivers were found".

Do you have links to instructions? I attempted to follow an intel help article ( http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/boards-and-kits/000005864.html

Did you boot to the win 7 install disk and choose Custom Install so you could format the new drive? Drives do not get recognized unless you do that.

Advanced format drives require F6 drivers.

I did choose custom install. No drive is recognized, so I could not format it even if I wanted to.

Out of desperation I formatted it properly on a secondary computer I have.

I don't know that particular system, but what SATA port do you have it plugged into?  Some systems may have a port or two just designed for Optical Devices.  

Also, if you have an optical device on a wrong port it might effect the drive recognition.  If you have the DVD on SATA 0, you may want to check that and move it to the last SATA port.

If you can't get it to work, you may have to get a new drive for testing.

Diskette drive, you have a floppy drive on your system?

Drivers need to be extracted.  WHQL means signed driver.

DELL = "DELL"
DISK = "DELL PERC RAID Driver (for x64)"
PERCH310.DeviceDesc  = "PERC H310 for Dell Precision"
PERCH710P.DeviceDesc = "PERC H710P for Dell Precision"

The PERC driver is NOT the INTEL RST driver.

The Driver you point to isnt a driver at all its the Raid utility.

The DRIVER is 153k  the file thats 4 megs is not the DRIVER.

This package provides the Dell PERC H310/H710P Adapter Controller Driver for Precision Workstations and is supported on Precision Tx600 series running the following Windows Operating Systems: Windows 7 (64-bit).

http://www.dell.com/support/home/us/en/19/Drivers/DriversDetails?driverId=1DV4H

File Format:
Hard-Drive
File Name:
DRVR_SAS_Dell_PERC8-1DV4H_Win7_X64_WHQL_setup_ZPE.exe

http://downloads.dell.com/FOLDER00575768M/9/DRVR_SAS_Dell_PERC8-1DV4H_Win7_X64_WHQL_setup_ZPE.exe

You can rename the EXE to .ZIP and use winzip to extract the files.

To use this driver, download and run the .exe file on a PC running Microsoft Windows. The installer will request a destination folder, enter the path to a USB memory key. Then use that USB memory key to support the installation of Windows 7 64-bit on the target PC.

I followed your instructions, when I get the USB back over to the Win7 Installer screen for loading drivers these three appear:

DELL PERC RAID Virtual Device (C:\f6\nodev.inf)

PERC H310 for Dell Precision (C:\f6\oemsetup.inf)

PERC H710P for Dell Precision (C:\f6\oemsetup.inf)

(Renamed the folder from DRVR_SAS_Dell_PERC8-1DV4H_Win7_X64_WHQL_setup_ZPE to "f6" in order to find it a little easier once extracted).

Selected these three options, then "Next". It appeared to load them. When I returned to the "Select a Drive to install Win7" screen I refreshed my drive list... my inserted drive still did not appear.

I rebooted the computer just incase and went through the steps to get to the "Select a Drive to install Win7" screen, no drives appeared. Hit refresh, still nada.

(I am really appreciating the help though, this thing is driving me wild!)

Hi ,

Ok I was having the same nightmare, I have zero expertise but I managed to solve it. Firstly check exactly what the name of your PERC Raid device is then just google the 'windows 7' drivers for that card. You should get a link to a Dell page with the drivers to download, usually the second option download instead of the first which will be an exe version. Stick these on yr usb stick and give it another go!

You have to initialize the Perc container CTRL R as Raid 0 if you only have one drive.

If you are not using PERC you need INTEL F6 drivers.   Advanced format Drives REQUIRE F6 drivers.

http://www.dell.com/support/article/us/en/04/SLN132460/EN

 Use these instructions to install and set up Dell PowerEdge RAID Controller (PERC) storage controller cards H310, H710, H710P, or H810 on Dell Precision workstations T1600, T3600, T5600, or T7600. For more specific information on the controller card or workstation, refer to that product’s user guide.

To install the PERC

    Turn off your workstation and all attached peripheral devices.

    Disconnect your workstation from the electrical outlet and remove the workstation cover.

    Insert the PERC into the SLOT1 (preferred) or SLOT4 expansion slots.Connect the hard disk drive (HDD) data cable to the H310 connector labeled A SAS.Earlier T7600 workstation may need to use SLOT4 because the HDD data cable is not long enough to reach to SLOT1.

Connect the AUX_LED cable to the H310 connector labeled SAS_ACT_LED_Conn.

Install HDDs in the desired order, starting with 0 as the first HDD and note the HDD numbers.Replace your workstation cover.

For T7600, HDD numbers 0-3 are available with a single HDD data cable with upgrade options for 4-7.

For T5600 and T3600, HDD numbers 0-1 are available with a single HDD data cable with upgrade options for 2-3.

Reconnect your workstation to the electrical outlet.

Turn on your workstation and press CTRL+R to access the BIOS Configuration Utility.

Press CTRL+N until the Ctrl Mgmt screen appears.

Reset the PERC to the factory defaults by pressing the Tab key until the Factory Default option is selected, and then press Enter.

When the warning message appears, use your arrow keys to select OK, and then press Enter.

The raid controller has f6 drivers(Mass storage) that must be unzipped to the root of a cd or floppy or usb flash drive. Which drivers depends on whether you are using the onboard INTEL controller or the H310/H710 SAS controller.   If that is the controller you have to initialize the raid container CTRL R bios format before installing the f6 drivers.  

This package provides the driver for Intel C600 SCU Storage Controller and is supported on Precision T series running the following Windows Operating system Windows: Vista, Windows 7 and Windows 8 (32/64-bit).

http://downloads.dell.com/FOLDER01066332M/3/RSTe_f6_X5W2D_A02_ZPE.exe

 http://www.dell.com/support/home/us/en/19/Drivers/DriversDetails?driverId=0TM0H&

The F6 driver is 156K in 4 files.

DRVR_SAS_Dell_PERC8_Win7_X64_A01_setup-0TM0H_ZPE.exe

File Format:Hard-Drive

Dell Spare Part Number (PN): HV52W.

Windows Explorer supports native viewing of CAB contents. Users can 
also use WinZip to examine the contents of the cab. Optionally 
Microsoft provides a couple of tools via the Windows XP Service Pack 2 
Support Tools to examine the cabinet files. Extraction tools (CabArc 
and Extract) are available from Microsoft at the following location:

www.microsoft.com/.../details.aspx
FamilyId=49AE8576-9BB9-4126-9761-BA8011FABF38&displaylang=en. 

- CAB Management Tool from Microsoft 
 Using CabArc to extract the driver contents and maintain directory 
 structure:
 CabArc.exe -p x *.* 
 (e.g. C:\CabArc.exe -p x C:\ *.* C:\drivers\) 

- Extract Utility from Microsoft
 Once you are in the directory where you want to extract, enter the 
 following command: extract /Y /E 

Precision T3600 DRIVER CAB VERSION A00 FGP4N