Where do I find drivers for a hard drive?

I've come across something similar to this before.  I was installing Win7 on a Toshiba laptop and needed drivers for the installer to be able to see the drive.  I got them from Toshiba.  It was kind of a pain.  I had to put the drivers on a flash drive, then insert the flash drive during install to access the drivers.

Typically, you don't need drivers unless you are using something unusual.  What is the make/model of the HDD in question?

What is the make/model of the machine you're installing Win7 on?

Are you talking about controller drivers ? Do you see blank drive or windows is asking where to install and drive list is empty ?
If you see blank drive maybe you must manually create partition before on in the process of installation

Has the drive been initialized or formatted? A blank out of the box drive needs to first be intialized and formatted.

You may need to get into a command prompt first and use DISKPART to create a primary partition on there.

I have also run into this when the hard drive either wasn't set up as an active partition with the wrong type of partition table or it had a partition but was hidden and you couldn't see it. The second issue I had to use a Sata to USB cable to hook the HDD to a working system and use a Windows system to clean and partition the drive and set it "Active" with a CMD Prompt.

The drive is WD, the computer is Dell Precision T5600.   Can I initialize the drive in another computer using computer management/disk management?

Yes you can, that is typically what I would do at the first sign of the HDD not appearing or functioning like it should. You can also retrieve/save critical data from it typically even if you can't get it to boot by just browsing the files from a working machine.

Yes You can but your Windows should see blank drive. If not it looks like default Windows installation controller driver is not compatible with your Computer.
 Are you trying install from CD or USB drive ? If USB make sure you're using USB2.0 not 3.0

I am trying to install from a DVD drive.

Please go to BIOS and change the SATA mode to IDE and try to install Windows again and check if that helps.

There is no option to change the SATA mode to IDE.

Is there somewhere I can find the drivers for the HD?   I cannot find them on the WD website.

If you boot from the Windows 7 install media, click on Repair Your Computer and then go to the Command Prompt and you can run Diskpart from there.

The basic commands you need to run are:

Diskpart
List disk
Select disk X (where X is the hard drive you want)
Create partition primary
Select partition 1
Active
Format FS=NTFS label=Win7 quick (you can label it whatever you want)
Exit

Restart and boot from the Windows 7 media again and try to install. There are other Diskpart command you may need to use if there is other stuff already on the drive, which there may be from your previous attempts.

There is no option to change the SATA mode to IDE.

What are the Options ?

There must be some of these options AHCI / IDE / RAID /UEFI.

if you tell us the Motherboard model we can check it for you.

If your computer are new, probably there is SECURE BOOT turned ON, Turn OFF secure boot, restart computer, go to BIOS and probably you'll find option to change controller type do IDE

For IDE mode Windows doesn't need any extra driver during installation.

I do not know what the items AHCI / IDE / RAID /UEFI mean.   There is no option for IDE.   AHCI is set to AHCI, RAID is enabled UEFI is set to legacy.   The computer is Dell Precision T5600.   How do I find out the motherboard model?   There is no option to turn on of off secure boot.   The BIOS is A07.   The computer was manufactured in 2013.   Is there some way to update the BIOS to A15?   I have another Dell Precision T5600 with the latest BIOS version.

How many Hard disk do you have on your PC ?

Disable RAID and remove any extra HDD, there must be only one HDD during Windows installation.
and Set SATA operation to ATA then check if that helps.

The computer was manufactured in 2013.   Is there some way to update the BIOS to A15?

Only install drivers from Dell website.
http://www.dell.com/support/home/us/en/04/product-support/product/precision-t5600/drivers

When I got this computer from eBay, it had no OS.   There was a RAID card and one HD.   The RAID card was connected to the one HD.   I removed the RAID card and connected the blank HD to HDD0 on the moherboard.   That seems to have been the problem, because when I connewcted the HD to SATA1, Windows started to install normally.   There are two optical drives.   These were connected to SATA0 and SATA1 respectively.   I do not want to use RAID, so how should I connect the HDs and the optical drives?   Can I go ahead and install Windows on the HD then change its connection to the HDD0 socket on the motherboard?   Sorry for all the confusion.   I am computer illiterate!   Thanks for any help you can provide.

You've never mentioned that computer has external RAID controller, not integrated with motherboard. I'm glad you've figured this out.
Yes, connect Disk to SATA 0 and CDROM / DVD to any other SATA connectors and all should be OK.
It's always better to do this before first OS installation, so you'll avoid all future problems with drivers remapping by working OS.

I was able to install Windows with the HD connected to SATA0 and updated the BIOS to A15.   If I want to use the RAID card after configuring two hard drives of equal size where should I connect the various leads to the motherboard?   I assume I will have to reinstall Windows after I set up the RAID.

If all you are going to have is two HDD's then you dont need the RAID card, just use Windows built-in software RAID