I believe NooNoo has it right with the zero fill. My drive was visible in the BIOS but Vista w/SP1 clean install couldn't see the drive. I plugged it into a running Vista box and it said it was a dynamic disk. I killed it and created a basic disk partition with device manager. Put it back in the original box and now Vista install sees it and installs fine. NooNoo's zero fill would have fixed it also. For those of you wondering what that is you can download a utility from most drive manufacturers that will wipe or zero fill the drive for you. If they have a quick or first and last x many sectors that should work fine.
Radeon xpress 200, 1100 sb600 and such do not need drivers to install Vista to a bare drive! I loaded a ton of them and never got Vista to see the drive.