Bootcamp does not create a windows drive for installation

Hello,

I am on a mac pro early 2008 and have 3 hdd in my mac. One for mac os and apps. One for timemachine and then the third one which I want to use for installation of a windows os.

Now, when I fire up bootcamp, it lets me choose to use an entire disk for windows. So, I go ahead and pick to correct disk. Then one second later it's done and should insert my windows disk to proceed with the installation.

I tried that, but when I got to the windows install screen (windows 7 that is), it says I can not install on the disk.

When I restart mac os, I can't see the disk on my desktop either. Although in all the guides, it states that there should be a "BOOTCAMP" disk on my desktop.

Anyone has any idea what could be causing this?

Thank you in advance.

Have you tried to create a Win7 partition on your Mac OS disk? I know the guide says you can use a whole internal disk, but I'm wondering if there may be something in Win7 that looks for the boot disk when installing and won't install on a separate disk.

I would try a BC install on your main OSX disk (I know that's not what you want, but for troubleshooting purposes). If that doesn't work for some reason, it is likely something either with your Win7 disk or with Win7 itself.

You could also try a BC install on that hard drive with an appropriate copy of XP or Vista and see if that works.

Good luck.

Gonna try to first disconnect all my other drives, so I only keep the one on which I want to install windows. Maybe that helps.

If that doesn't work, I will try to create a partition my mac os disk.
I just find it strange that I can't see the "BOOTCAMP" disk after exiting BC.

I installed vista a while ago and can't really recall having this much problem.

Yes, it is weird. I think it's likely something in the Win7 release candidate that doesn't play nice with BC on a separate drive, but I am simply guessing. Good luck!

Got it installed
Here's what I did. I just formatted the entire disk in fat 32 using the disk utility in mac os. I then rebooted and inserted my windows 7 dvd.

Then at the disk selection screen in the windows 7 installation, I just had to reformat the fat 32 to ntfs using the windows 7 installation and I could proceed.

So, I actually did not use BC. Thanks for the suggestions though

Very interesting, thanks for posting your solution.

Cheers