2 Seagate 750 GB HDD but only one is recognized?

[mannyfresh8]

In BIOS the 2 HDD are being recognized. However if I go into the System Monitor of Ubuntu it says something around 695 GB which i assume has to do with my partition but I am completely a noob with LINUX OS so I am trying to tackle each problem one at a time. How do I get the OS to recognize both HD? Let me know what other info you may need.

[oldfred]

I have 3 drives but in system monitor on see mounted partitions. I only have some of each drive currently mounted in this version.

try these in a terminal and see what you get

sudo fdisk -l

and

sudo blkid -L

Some older ubuntus only sudo blkid will work. These command

[mannyfresh8]

I have 3 drives but in system monitor on see mounted partitions. I only have some of each drive currently mounted in this version.

try these in a terminal and see what you get

sudo fdisk -l

and

sudo blkid -L

Some older ubuntus only sudo blkid will work. These command

Ok. The terminal indicates I have 2 drives. Disk /dev/sda: 750.1 GB and then some technical info follows about that Disk. Then it says Disk /dev/sdb 750.1 GB and then afain info about the disk but there is one big difference.

It says:
Disk /dev/sdb doesn't contain a valid partition table


Please understand that I am a noob. I came from windows so I am new to all this. So i probably made some stupid mistake.

What do I do from here?

Oh these are SATA drives...

[oldfred]

If it is a brand new drive with nothing installed it has not been partitioned nor formatted. Suggest using gparted to look at it. You cannot use gparted on mounted drives but since it is a second unformated drive you should be able to run it from your Ubuntu install. Your install usually does not have gparted since you cannot use it on the mounted drive.

Use synaptic to download gparted and run gparted. Do you know how you want to partition it?

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/HowtoPartition
http://www.psychocats.net/ubuntu/partitioning

[mannyfresh8]

oldfred,

I installed gparted and partitioned the drive and have the 2nd drive as the Slave and the 1st drive (Ubuntu Installed) as the Master.

As for partitioning the 2nd drive I didn't know what to do so I just used the entire drive and set it to Primary. Now the drive comes up under Places as 750.2 GB Media and if i click it. It asks to be mounted which i have no clue what thats about. Is that something I want to do?

Anyway i finally decided that I am going to need a dual boot because i use a lot of software that requires windows. So how should I go about the dual boot. I have seen several different options out there. Should I just install windows on the slave drive and leave Ubuntu where it is?

And for me to do this should I disconnect the ubuntu drive and then boot the system up to install windows xp? this way the windows install wont touch the ubuntu drive?

Whats your recommendation here?

Sorry for all the hassle I really just want to get this system up and running the right way so I can utilize all my software.

[oldfred]

I like the idea of each hard drive being bootable which requires its own operating system and MBR linked to that operating system. That way if a drive fails you can switch drives and still boot without pulling out the liveCD. Most installs have windows on the drive and windows really likes to be first and Grub overwrites the windows MBR and automatically sets up a link to windows. Any other way is a bit more complicated but very doable.

Disconnect Ubuntu drive and install windows in the currently new drive. You may want to think about partitioning the drive. Windows will default to the entire drive. If you partition it first you can make a smaller NTFS partition and windows will only see that to install into. I still dual boot but 3 years ago was mostly Windows now almost all Ubuntu, but I created a FAT32 shared partition for data that I wanted to see in both. I now plan to convert that shared to NTFS as FAT has many issues - no files over 4GB and other issues.

When you plug the Ubuntu drive back in, make it primary and you will have to manually add a boot stanza for windows so grub's menu.lst has an entry for windows.

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=283131
# see above for labeling & mounting & permissions
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Mount/

[mannyfresh8]

I like the idea of each hard drive being bootable which requires its own operating system and MBR linked to that operating system. That way if a drive fails you can switch drives and still boot without pulling out the liveCD. Most installs have windows on the drive and windows really likes to be first and Grub overwrites the windows MBR and automatically sets up a link to windows. Any other way is a bit more complicated but very doable.

Disconnect Ubuntu drive and install windows in the currently new drive. You may want to think about partitioning the drive. Windows will default to the entire drive. If you partition it first you can make a smaller NTFS partition and windows will only see that to install into. I still dual boot but 3 years ago was mostly Windows now almost all Ubuntu, but I created a FAT32 shared partition for data that I wanted to see in both. I now plan to convert that shared to NTFS as FAT has many issues - no files over 4GB and other issues.

When you plug the Ubuntu drive back in, make it primary and you will have to manually add a boot stanza for windows so grub's menu.lst has an entry for windows.

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=283131
# see above for labeling & mounting & permissions
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Mount/

Oh ok great this is what I was looking to do. So I just want to clear some things up first. If I use Gpartitioner and format the 2nd drive with a small NTFS partition (what would be a decent size?) I also want to be able to access the space between both OS's. What format should I make the 2nd partition on the 2nd drive?

Thanks again for all your help.

P.S. How do I modify GRUB to let me choose which drive to boot?

[oldfred]

I am not sure the size windows still needs to be, it also will depend upon which windows. You could start with 30GB to 50GB and if not enough room left for expansion expand the partition with gparted. My old WinXP with lots of stuff over 5 years is 30GB, but I have moved most data to a shared partition. You then can partition the rest of the drive as you please. NTFS for anything you may share and ext3 or ext4 for Ubuntu stuff. You could leave some unused until you know and then either expand or add another partition.

When you plug your Ubuntu drive back in as master it should boot normally. You will need a map type entry to make windows think it is on the first drive. If not in second drive first partition sdb1 or grub (hd1,0) you will have to adjust entry:

Add before or after the automagic area in /boot/grub/menu.lst
to backup and then to edit:

sudo cp /boot/grub/menu.lst /boot/grub/menu.lst.backup
gksudo gedit /boot/grub/menu.lst

title Microsoft Windows on sdb1
rootnoverify (hd1,0)
savedefault
map (hd0) (hd1)
map (hd1) (hd0)
chainloader +1

[BudE]

I have 3 drives but in system monitor on see mounted partitions. I only have some of each drive currently mounted in this version.

try these in a terminal and see what you get

sudo fdisk -l

and

sudo blkid -L

Some older ubuntus only sudo blkid will work. These command

Hi Oldfred,
I have Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy and wanted to know just how do you find the (Terminal) ? And though I have seen that term SUDO...just what does it mean? I am a real noob also and trying to learn bits and pieces as I go along.

thanks,
Bud

[oldfred]

Hi BudE

Normally you should start a new thread as each thread should be on the same topic. All questions are valid especially in the Absolute Beginner Talk as we recognize users are new to Ubuntu & linux.

At the top of the beginner area are Sticky Threads to standard help. One of these is a free beginners guide that will help you understand Ubuntu.

Terminal is a command line rather than menu based way to issue commands to the system, for me it was like DOS which was before Apple and Microsoft had windowing systems. Terminal is in Appications on the top menu, accessories, terminal.

Sudo is a temporary super user to issue system commands. You should be sure of a command before you issue it as as super user you can also harm your system. Linux assumes you know what you are doing. That said we regularly seem to break our systems and part of the fun is figuring out how to fix it. Sometimes we break it so badly, we have to reinstall and that is why we backup, so not all is lost.