Wmaker,
If your using XP it may need the sata drivers installed from a floppy or zipdrive. For whatever reason XP doesnt seem to "see" sata drives,my guess is it "see" IDE drives but needs the drivers for Sata.
Or I'm way off and have no idea what I'm talking about..... very likely!! 
You're partly correct. XP setups which are older than SP2 do not contain sata-drivers and if you try installing using such a cd you will need to install sata drivers separately by pressing f6 during setup. Post SP2 versions handle sata just fine.
In Win7 as mentioned, the new drive may have to be initialized through drive management before it shows up. To do that click the windows 'orb' on the lower left corner, type diskmgmt.msc to the 'search' box and execute the snap-in that the search will find for you. That will open win7 disk management snap-in and the drive should be listed there. If not, shut down, reinsert cables to the drive (both motherboard and drive side) and try again. Some drives may need changing jumper positions i.e. if you use sata3 drive on a motherboard that only supports sata2.
