11.04 install won't see hard drive

[Thumper33]

Ok, I have an existing Windows 7 machine that I am moving to Ubuntu. This is important, it will NOT be a dual boot machine.

Here is the system setup;

320GB Seagate SATA drive split into a 40GB OS partition (where Windows 7 was) and the rest partitioned for extra storage. In addition, I have a LSI MegaRAID 8480E RAID card with four 1TB Seagate SATA drives configured in a RAID 5.

The plan was to install Ubuntu on the 40GB partition, overwriting and erasing Windows 7. The RAID array is storage only, NOT for any OS operation, so it really doesn't matter here, except for the oddity that this is the ONLY partition the Ubuntu installer sees, not the 320 or any of it's partitions.

Now, here's the best part. When I go into GParted or the Disk Utility, both show the 320GB installed, in fact, when I go into the Computer section, I can open and access the data on the 259GB storage partition while using the live CD. The hard drive is working, and the system sees it...it just does not list it as an option to install to.

Why??

I used GParted to delete and reformat the Windows partition (set it as ext4), and it still will not show anything but the RAID array as an install point. I made sure to unmount the 320GB hard drive before installing as well, no luck.

Anyone have any ideas??

[SOLVED]

[seawolf167]

Instead of following the "guided" partitioning setup, if you select to manually partition the drive does the installer pick up on the drive then?

[Thumper33]

Instead of following the "guided" partitioning setup, if you select to manually partition the drive does the installer pick up on the drive then?

Nope, not at all.

However, I did solve this one this morning. I went into GParted and deleted both the partitions on the 320GB drive, then I created a new ms-dos partition table. Only after doing that did the installer see the drive as available. Not sure why, I could swear I have installed over Windows partitions before.

But, at least I got it working.