sda or sdb?

[Fishhooker]

I posted this over at the "Absolute Beginner Talk" forum, but I was getting no answers, and realized that this would be a better place to put my question.

I've got a Toshiba Satellite X205-SLi6, with two physical hard drives. I've been using Windows Vista ever since I got this computer; all of my data is on C:, and I plan to install Ubuntu Studio 8.10 on D:.

I go to the partitioning menu, and I select "Guided: Use Entire Disk," and that's when it all goes pear shaped. It shows me two options that I've never seen before:

SCSI3 (0,0,0) (sda)
SCSI5 (0,0,0) (sdb)

Which one of these translates to C:, and which translates to D: ?

[Pumalite]

Post:

sudo fdisk -lu

[Fishhooker]

Ah... There's just one problem with using that: I don't have any variant of Linux installed yet.

[Ericyzfr1]

If you choose manual, it will then show you the partitions on every hard drive, if you remember the size of your vista partition you should be able to tell which hard drive is which.

[cdtech]

Normally the primary drive (your windows install) would be sda and your secondary would be sdb. You could power down and remove your windows drive (if at all possible) then do the install. This way your sure not to overwrite the Windows drive. Although your BIOS is most likely set up to boot from the primary drive of sda (Windows)........

[73ckn797]

I posted this over at the "Absolute Beginner Talk" forum, but I was getting no answers, and realized that this would be a better place to put my question.

I've got a Toshiba Satellite X205-SLi6, with two physical hard drives. I've been using Windows Vista ever since I got this computer; all of my data is on C:, and I plan to install Ubuntu Studio 8.10 on D:.

I go to the partitioning menu, and I select "Guided: Use Entire Disk," and that's when it all goes pear shaped. It shows me two options that I've never seen before:

SCSI3 (0,0,0) (sda)
SCSI5 (0,0,0) (sdb)

Which one of these translates to C:, and which translates to D: ?

sda wil generally be what Windows calls "C" and sdb would be the "D" drive. Linix does not use that designation.

Look at it this way:

C = sda = hd0
D = sdb = hd1

and so forth. sda is the Linux designation. hd0 is how grub lists drives. Each subsequent drive will incremnt up either "sda, sdb, sdc" or "hd0, hd1, hd2".

[Fishhooker]

Thanks guys!

I'm also wondering, what does this:


Post:

sudo fdisk -lu

do?

I'm downloading vanilla Ubuntu in order to make a live CD so that I can do that terminal command, but what exactly would it tell me if I did that?

[perlluver]

Thanks guys!

I'm also wondering, what does this:



do?

I'm downloading vanilla Ubuntu in order to make a live CD so that I can do that terminal command, but what exactly would it tell me if I did that?

It will tell you what each hard drive contains, and the filesystem type. For example, if Windows is installed, it will be NTFS.

[Shazaam]

A sample output of that terminal code...

Disk /dev/sda: 320.0 GB, 320072933376 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 38913 cylinders, total 625142448 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00047d37

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 63 625137344 312568641 5 Extended
/dev/sda5 126 4369679 2184777 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda6 4369743 53817749 24724003+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda7 53817813 136086614 41134401 83 Linux
/dev/sda8 136086678 261088379 62500851 83 Linux
/dev/sda9 * 261088443 469322909 104117233+ 83 Linux

Disk /dev/sdb: 80.0 GB, 80026361856 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 9729 cylinders, total 156301488 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x000096f6

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 * 63 156296384 78148161 7 HPFS/NTFS

[Fishhooker]

So for that sample output, one would infer that you have Linux installed on sda, and Windows installed on sdb?

EDIT: I went into the live CD, did sudo fdisk -lu, and this is what it said.


Disk /dev/sda: 200.0 GB, 200049647616 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 24321 cylinders, total 390721968 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xd405d405

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 2048 3074047 1536000 27 Unknown
Partition 1 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/sda2 * 3074048 390721535 193823744 7 HPFS/NTFS

Disk /dev/sdb: 200.0 GB, 200049647616 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 24321 cylinders, total 390721968 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x5d379805

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 2048 390721535 195359744 f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/sdb5 4096 390721535 195358720 7 HPFS/NTFS


I have no idea how to decipher what the terminal says (other than the filesystems). All I know is that the drive with more free space is the one I should be doing the installation on.

[Shazaam]

"So for that sample output, one would infer that you have Linux installed
on sda, and Windows installed on sdb?"

Yes they are. Originally I had XP and a few flavors of linux on the 80 gig IDE drive. Then I bought the 320 SATA drive for more room. I eventually got tired of Windows bothering linux so I put it on the IDE drive by itself and have used the 320 exclusivly for linux. The fun part was getting XP configured as not being the primary os. There are threads here on the forums on how to do this. Normally you would need to have Windows first on the boot drive and then the other operating systems next.


"I have no idea how to decipher what the terminal says (other than the filesystems).
All I know is that the drive with more free space is the one I should be doing
the installation on."

You can use gparted on the livecd to figure which one has the most free space (System>Administration>Partition Editor). If you go to the upper right you will see a drop down box that says "sda"; click it to get to sdb.

[Pumalite]

If you are going to install Ubuntu in a different drive than Windows; read this:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=179902&highlight=dualboot
Did you format that drive?
Use TestDisk to check your drive;
http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk_Download