Does the drive work from your current windows install when connected as a secondary drive? If it works there, it may be an issue with the windows 7 installer. One thing to check is if the windows 7 install disk has ahci drivers (or working ahci drivers) for your motherboard chipset. There should be a point during the install where you can install custom drivers from a disk. You might want to try getting the latest AHCI drivers for your MB and installing them during that point (or slipstream them onto a custom windows 7 install disk using RT seven lite.
Otherwise it sounds like you just got a lemon. Sorry to hear that.
