I'm having quite a weird problem when trying to install Windows 7 SP1 on a new Corsair Force Series 3 SSD to replace a failing HDD in my wife's laptop.

When I boot to Windows install, it shows that I have no disks to install to, and tells me to find it a driver to any custom disks I may have.

When I go to repair option on the first install window, and then open command prompt Window, I can see the disk using diskpart, and can partition it and format partitions, and then later access them from command prompt and copy files to them.

After creating partitions, clicking the "browse" button in Windows install screen that shows no disks available to install Windows to, does show the partitions created by diskpart!

So, it does detect the disk and partitions, but refuses to list them as options to install to.

People on the Interwebs seem to suggest that just running diskpart "clean" solved the issue for most people, just creating an "active" "primary" partition is al most tutorials suggest. Both got me only as far as described above.

The BIOS doesn't have RAID option, changing between "ATA" and "AHCI" (the only available options) didn't make any difference.

Might be worth mentioning that this is on a laptop that has Sata III controller for main drive (which I connected the Sata3 SSD to), and Sata II for DVD (which I used for Windows install media). That's what googling brings at least (DELL XPS 15 L502).

Any ideas?

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Update:

The SSD is 460 GB. I tried setting it all as one partition and creating 70-90 GB partition as well (NTFS).

More importantly, Windows doesn't list the partition as one it cannot install to (which it does with disks in general when they are small for example). What happens here is different. It doesn't list anything at all. It shows empty list of drives.