Formatting problem

[fieryindian]

Hi everyone!
I recently bought a dell studio 1537 and have wiped out vista and installed xp. i have created partitions for installing ubuntu, which are the last 2 partitions, one for ubuntu and the other for swap, on the extended logical drive. the live cd runs properly without much problems, although after some time the keys stop working.
The real problem is whenever i try to format the partitions for ubuntu to ext3, i get the following error "cannot format /sda# to ext3. The device apparently does not exist".

Can anyone help me with this?
thanks in advance.

[natehall]

Sda is usually a memory stick or something like that. To format the hard drive it should be hda. By the way if you do format a memory stick to ext3 the computer will act likes the stick is invisible! Try this command and post the results here.

sudo fdisk -l

This will list all your partitions.

[armandh]

I do not pre make the Ubuntu partitions.
rather I leave the space for Ubuntu unpartitioned.
Installing Ubuntu I select from the partition menu;
"use largest unpartitioned space"
Ubuntu is installed to a root ext3 partition and a swap partition is created.
both are in a new extended partition.
grub works perfectly.

xp does not play well with other primary active partitions.

.

[fieryindian]

Thanks a lot for the responses. Really appreciate! :)

Nathall - I too observed that hda should be the one shown instead of sda. But all my windows partitions too are being shown as sda. It might be so since this is a laptop. I'm just guessing.
"
Disk /dev/sda: 320.0 GB, 320072933376 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 38913 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x08000000

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 1 14 112423+ de Dell Utility
/dev/sda2 * 15 1320 10485760 7 HPFS/NTFS
Partition 2 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/sda3 1321 38912 301957740 f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/sda5 1321 3870 20482843+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda6 3871 6420 20482843+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda7 6421 10244 30716248+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda8 10245 14068 30716248+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda9 14069 17892 30716248+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda10 17893 19167 10241406 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda11 19168 22991 30716248+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda12 22992 26815 30716248+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda13 26816 31914 40957686 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda14 31915 33812 15245653+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda15 33813 34833 8201151 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda16 34834 38836 32154066 83 Linux
/dev/sda17 38837 38912 610438+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris
"

Armandh - The thing is that since this is a new laptop, most of the partitions do not yet have data in them. I dont want linux to partition all that space and use it for itself. :D
Else I would've done what you have done.

[armandh]

even if the partitions are empty and there is unpartitioned space no partitioned space will be used when "use unpartitioned space is selected if all the space is partitioned reduce one by about 10 G

or if there is unpartitioned space more than you want to use

try putting in one that uses all but 10 gig and remove after
you load to the unpartitioned space

I recommend the parted magic
a live disk where you get a much better view of what is happening.