Gparted Live, Ubuntu Live, and Fdisk not recognizing a hard drive.

[maberib]

Hi everyone,

My mom's computers seem to be prone to getting viruses. I decided to install Ubuntu and Windows 7 while reformatting, just in case she could get comfortable with Ubuntu and greatly reduce the risk of viruses.

Currently, the machine has some corrupted Windows install - such that I can't even boot into Windows, or Windows safe mode.

So I made an Ubuntu live boot disk (and USB stick, also). I had to disable apci to even get it to boot. But, going to install Ubuntu, the only drive that was recognized by Ubuntu was the USB stick that had I had booted from. Same thing with Fdisk. Same think with Gparted. I downloaded the Gparted live CD - same thing.

I found this Thread (http://ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-758401.html). They seem to have mostly the same problem, and they fixed it by switching the hard drive from master to Cable Select. In this thread (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=629566), they resolved the problem of Gparted not seeing the hard drive by switching it from SATA2. I have no idea how to accomplish either of these tasks on a laptop, however.

The laptop is a Toshiba Satellite C650D. If anyone has any suggestions, I'd love to hear them. Alternatively, if anyone knows how to carry out either of the solutions I found on a latop, I'd love to hear that as well!

Thanks,


Ben

[oldfred]

Portables do not have much in the way of BIOS setting but see if any of these apply. On my system XP booted fine but sda disappeared. I ran chkdsk from my XP CD and then gparted could find sda. Try chkdsk on all NTFS partitions.

BIOS should be set for IDE compatibility mode

The mode for the disc was set to AUTO. Changed it to LBA. Then it worked.
Change SATA controller mode from AHCI to Compatibility
So then I tried disabling "IDE DMA Transfer Access" which had no explanation in the BIOS as to what it did. Restarted the computer and Ubuntu booted up no problem. According to the motherboard manual "This item is used to enable or disable the DMA transfer function of the IDE hard drive."
BIOS in not updated to latest revision
BIOS not set to boot CD or USB first
BIOS shows floppy or firewire and you do not have those
changing newer BIOS SATA from 6 Gbs to a 3Gbs
Other BIOS settings - Security or locked down Boot sector, Bitlocker
Disable Quickboot in BIOS
Flexnet in Boot area (DRM "rights"/security)
Raid meta data on drive - even if one drive (Vendor happend to set it on)
NTFS partition needs chkdsk, gparted will not see drive if flag set, flag is set on resize

Also see this link for other alternatives:
http://www.rodsbooks.com/missing-parts/index.html

[maberib]

Hi,

Thanks for the response. I just got the chance to take a look at my mother's computer again.

Of all the bios settings you recommended, the only one that shows up in the bios (Insyde H2O v3.5) is the hard drive controller mode. When I change the controller mode to "compatibility", linux and windows boot disks refuse to load. That or they wanted longer than the half an hour I had given each of them.

So I tried to persist with ACHI mode. I tried to run chkdsk off all of my windows disks (32 and 64 bit versions of windows 7 and 64 bit vista) but none of them recognized the hard drive as being there.

I had almost decided to dismiss it as a hardware problem and replace the hard drive, but then I noticed this:
http://img152.imageshack.us/img152/967/tmp864cc.th.png (http://img152.imageshack.us/my.php?image=tmp864cc.png)
http://img443.imageshack.us/img443/8946/tmpqyaykj.th.png (http://img443.imageshack.us/my.php?image=tmpqyaykj.png)

Is that some default that shows up in Disk Utility, or does that mean that Disk Utility was recognizing the hard drive when gparted, fdisk, Windows installer, and Ubuntu installer weren't?

Also, looking around other forums, someone was instructed to post the results of lsmod. I thought I'd do that same, in case something in there catches anyone's eye.



ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo fdisk -l
ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ lsmod
Module Size Used by
binfmt_misc 6599 1
parport_pc 26058 0
ppdev 5556 0
lp 7342 0
parport 31492 3 parport_pc,ppdev,lp
dm_crypt 11385 0
snd_hda_codec_conexant 29736 1
snd_hda_intel 22107 2
snd_hda_codec 87552 2 snd_hda_codec_conexant,snd_hda_intel
snd_hwdep 5040 1 snd_hda_codec
snd_pcm 71475 2 snd_hda_intel,snd_hda_codec
snd_seq_midi 4588 0
arc4 1165 2
snd_rawmidi 17783 1 snd_seq_midi
ath9k 88756 0
snd_seq_midi_event 6047 1 snd_seq_midi
ath9k_common 5982 1 ath9k
snd_seq 47174 2 snd_seq_midi,snd_seq_midi_event
snd_timer 19067 2 snd_pcm,snd_seq
ath9k_hw 292297 2 ath9k,ath9k_common
snd_seq_device 5744 3 snd_seq_midi,snd_rawmidi,snd_seq
joydev 8735 0
snd 49006 13
snd_hda_codec_conexant,snd_hda_intel,snd_hda_codec ,snd_hwdep,snd_pcm,snd_rawmidi,snd_seq,snd_timer,s nd_seq_device
ath 8153 2 ath9k,ath9k_hw
mac80211 231541 2 ath9k,ath9k_common
cfg80211 144470 4 ath9k,ath9k_common,ath,mac80211
uvcvideo 55847 0
soundcore 880 1 snd
shpchp 29886 0
snd_page_alloc 7120 2 snd_hda_intel,snd_pcm
psmouse 59033 0
i2c_piix4 8635 0
videodev 43098 1 uvcvideo
led_class 2633 1 ath9k
k10temp 2607 0
v4l1_compat 13359 2 uvcvideo,videodev
serio_raw 4022 0
squashfs 25209 1
aufs 152358 4331
nls_cp437 4931 1
isofs 30022 1
dm_raid45 81721 0
xor 15136 1 dm_raid45
btrfs 489451 0
zlib_deflate 19266 1 btrfs
crc32c 2531 1
libcrc32c 887 1 btrfs
radeon 825934 3
ttm 56633 1 radeon
drm_kms_helper 30200 1 radeon
drm 168054 5 radeon,ttm,drm_kms_helper
usb_storage 40172 0
ahci 19013 0
libahci 21667 2 ahci
agpgart 32011 2 ttm,drm
pata_atiixp 3288 0
i2c_algo_bit 5168 1 radeon


Also, in case it's relevant: To get the Ubuntu Live CD to load, I have to use the "ACPI=OFF" option.

[oldfred]

Disk Utility is not seeing the drive but the motherboard's drivers for the SATA & IDE drives. It should then show a drive under the driver used to see the drive.

Is BIOS showing the drive?

[maberib]

I didn't see it in the bios - although I also didn't see any area where it should be displayed. I'll take another look once I get back to the laptop again.