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rlh1919
November 12th, 2009, 01:58 PM
I am trying to install Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala and it does not see the hard drive.
When I boot to the CD and go through the setup and it reaches the hard drive partition step it does not see my hard drive. I have tried booting to the CD, not doing an install and from a terminal typing apt-get remove dmraid. I have also tried changing the BIOS setting to raid mode from sata. I also tried using an IDE CD because the sata drive install was giving me busybox initramfs errors.
The hard drive is good, I can install Fedora or Slackware on it just not Ubuntu.
I would try an install via USB but I don't have that option in my BIOS.
The Ubuntu disc I burned is fine, works in other machines.
I've tried everything that I know of and I'm out of ideas, any suggestions would be greatly appreciated, thanks.

homza
November 12th, 2009, 02:34 PM
I have that problem in my Aspire One 250-0bk. 9.04 work fine, but 9.10 netbook remix installer can't find my hdd (gparted in live CD can see them).
Can someone help us?

NJC
November 12th, 2009, 10:15 PM
I've only had this happen once (no drives recognized under Live CD) and that was when I had this setting DISABLED in BIOS:

ACPI ASIC

rlh1919
November 14th, 2009, 02:55 AM
I've only had this happen once (no drives recognized under Live CD) and that was when I had this setting DISABLED in BIOS:

ACPI ASIC

Thanks I'll double check that setting as soon as I can get back to it, the machine is at my friends house and they are out of the country until next week.

ed-koala
November 14th, 2009, 03:05 AM
Is your system AMD64, with serial raid? If so, you might want to check this thread http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1322005

You'll need the alt install CD if this applies to you.

rlh1919
November 14th, 2009, 03:23 AM
Is your system AMD64, with serial raid? If so, you might want to check this thread http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1322005

You'll need the alt install CD if this applies to you.

Yeah thanks, it is AMD64 using SATA with 8GB memory. I'll burn a copy of the alt cd and try that with the steps you posted in that thread.

rlh1919
November 24th, 2009, 11:49 PM
Is your system AMD64, with serial raid? If so, you might want to check this thread http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1322005

You'll need the alt install CD if this applies to you.

I tried the alt install and it still does not see my hard drive. I put the hard drive in another machine and it sees it just fine. I tried changing SATA cables and port.
When the computer is booting from the Ubuntu CD I get this error:
failed to identify I/O error err_mask=0x4 limiting sata link to 1.5 Gbps

The following is information about the machine itself if it's of any help.
Hitachi 1TB HDD
LBA Mode Suppoted
Block Mode 16 secotrs
PIO Mode 4
Async DMA Multiword DMA-2
Ultra DMA Ultra DMA-6
SMART supported

LBA/Large Mode Auto
Block (Multi-Sector Transfer Auto
DMA Mode Auto
SMART Disabled
32Bit Data Transfer Enabled

AMIBIOS
Version 08.00.15
Build Date 10/20/08

Processor AMD Phenom 9500 quad-Core
Speed 2211MHz
count 4

System Memory 7936MB

Motherboard
XFX GeForce 8300

peely
November 28th, 2009, 02:08 PM
I had the same problem with this mobo, use the alternate CD and hit F6 at the boot menu and go through an unguided setup. When you scan for hard drives and enter the partition manager, don't elect to enable SATA when asked.

darkod
November 28th, 2009, 02:27 PM
From the LiveCD what does
sudo fdisk -l (small L)

show about the drive?

Soofyan
November 30th, 2009, 05:03 PM
I am having the same problem on my desktop.
The Live CD and fdisk do see my harddrives/partitions. The installer however, does not.

I have added a screenshot for you. On the left you'll see the fdisk output and nautilus both seeing the HDD. On the right you'll see that the installer doesn't see any HDD.

darkod
November 30th, 2009, 05:42 PM
How about:
sudo blkid

Sometimes when there are traces of raid, this can happen. It is enough that the disk was used in raid earlier, then the raid was deleted but traces of the configuration remain and 9.10 can pick them up and consider the drive as raid member (yes, even if it's only single drive in the computer). blkid usually can show that.

If it's not that, I'm running out of ideas.

Soofyan
November 30th, 2009, 06:47 PM
Okay, here is a new screenshot containing the info.
The config changed a bit. In this screenshot you will see that I also have an extra harddrive in my pc. It is connected to a JMicron Raid Controller thing, but in IDE mode - not RAID.
In the previous screenshot I turned the Raid Controller off to see if that thing caused the problems.
I also deleted sda3 and sda4/5 partitions (old Ubuntu 9.04 installation) to see if some unallocated space could help, but it clearly didn't. :-)

In this screenshot you will see the installer trying to install Ubuntu to sdb, and not sda. Sda is also not available in the dropdown box under the 'Erase and use the entire disk'.

wilee-nilee
November 30th, 2009, 07:06 PM
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1339631

darkod
November 30th, 2009, 07:06 PM
Since you are not running any raid it will not hurt doing in terminal:
sudo apt-get remove dmraid

See if that helps. I am also confused a bit by your install, sdc1 is labeled Ubuntu 9.10 and is FAT32, why? Then you have some loop1 ext3 device.

Soofyan
November 30th, 2009, 07:24 PM
Since you are not running any raid it will not hurt doing in terminal:
sudo apt-get remove dmraid

This worked! It gave a few errors in Terminal, but the installer does see my HDD now - Installing Ubuntu now.


I am also confused a bit by your install, sdc1 is labeled Ubuntu 9.10 and is FAT32, why? Then you have some loop1 ext3 device.

Sdc1 is my 2 Gb USB Stick from which I am installing Ubuntu.


Thanks for the help, and the quick responses!

darkod
November 30th, 2009, 07:30 PM
Glad you got it sorted out. :)

sites
December 3rd, 2009, 01:47 AM
I had the same problem, and this solved it!

Thank you!!!! :D

burgundy
December 16th, 2009, 09:40 AM
I too would also like to add that "sudo apt-get remove dmraid" solved my Ubuntu 9.10 installation problems.

Some reason gparted saw the drive, but the installer didn't...

jumping_snake
December 16th, 2009, 10:06 PM
I too would also like to add that "sudo apt-get remove dmraid" solved my Ubuntu 9.10 installation problems.

Some reason gparted saw the drive, but the installer didn't...

I had the exact same thing happening: Drive shows up in GParted and Drive Utitlity, but not in the installer. After running the sudo blkid (thanks darkod), I noticed that my SATA drive was listed as "/dev/sda: TYPE="isw_raid_member" and did the sudo apt-get remove dmraid and now I'm currently installing 9.10 64-bit on my server. Thanks all for the ideas and responses!!

heizenberg
January 13th, 2010, 08:10 PM
What a headache this problem was and what a life-saver this thread is :)

Removing dmraid worked for me as well! This ought to be classified as a bug - the installer should show the disk and warn the user that the drive had previously been used in a RAID config.

merlync70
January 15th, 2010, 06:31 AM
Since you are not running any raid it will not hurt doing in terminal:
sudo apt-get remove dmraid

See if that helps. I am also confused a bit by your install, sdc1 is labeled Ubuntu 9.10 and is FAT32, why? Then you have some loop1 ext3 device.

You are awesome! I had the same issue and this cleared it up.

mechanicman
May 9th, 2010, 12:15 AM
Since you are not running any raid it will not hurt doing in terminal:
sudo apt-get remove dmraid

See if that helps. I am also confused a bit by your install, sdc1 is labeled Ubuntu 9.10 and is FAT32, why? Then you have some loop1 ext3 device.

this was the help i needed. thanks.

idfred
May 9th, 2010, 06:08 PM
Thank you! With this action I finally installed Lucid.

StreetsBolted
December 11th, 2010, 04:02 PM
I can't thank you enough darkod! I tried everything else before I came across this. I spent a day and a half trying to get 10.10 installed when it was as simple as sudo apt-get remove dmraid. Jeers to Acer and Dell for configuring a single drive with RAID - makes no sense to me.