11.04 installer reads HDD as unallocated space, 9.04 installs flawlessly.

[michaugt]

Alright, I downloaded Ubuntu 11.04 on release day, checked it, burned it. In installation i get no option to install side by side. I get options for clear disk and install 11.04, or manual configuration.

The HDD was partitioned with Vista, Ubuntu (Don't remember the version), and a swap.

I logged into Vista formatted the Ubuntu and swap partitions and allocated the space back into the Vista partition.

Try installer again, same problem.

Stuff i have done since.

Tried Wubi = (Could not find the ISO /ubuntu/install/installation.iso) on boot up.

Chkdsk /r /f 3 times = found no errors.

Fixdisk = found no GPT data.

Gparted = found no errors.

Formatted and reinstalled Vista twice = still same problem.

Bootrec.exe/fixmbr /fixboot = successful but still no change with problem

Ran the Ubuntu 11.04 install successfully in VirtualBox.

Downloaded Ubuntu 9.04 = clean install with no problem.

Now the 11.04 disk sees all of my partitions but still refuses to read any OS on disk and won't let me side by side.

I uploaded the RESULTS.txt that i got in my clean 9.04 installation. (sorry i don't know how to do the cool thing where you put it in the box. If anyone wants me to relink it like that just tell me how real quick =)

Remember, the partitions are odd right now but the problem started with one fully functional partition.

System info:
Asus PQ5 PRO mobo.
Intel E8400 2 core.
ATI 4850 hd.
Seagate 640GB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA
DDR2 - two 2gigs.

Thank you so much for reading, and hi!

[oldfred]

Welcome to the forums.

You linux partition looks small. The new version wants to see a larger one.

I would use the Vista MMC to shrink Vista a little more.
Then use gparted from LiveCD to expand the / partiton to 20GB, make swap 4GB and at least 30GB for /home. Then use manual install.

GParted partitioning software - Full tutorial
http://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/gparted.html
Screenshots of using gparted
http://www.howtoforge.com/partitioning_with_gparted

Depending on how much memory you have you may not absolutely need swap but having some is still recommended. I do not hibernate (boots fast enough for me) but if hibernating then you need swap equal to RAM. And if dual booting with windows a shared NTFS partition is also recommended. But you usually cannot create that as part of the install, just leave some space. Or partition in advance (recommended).
One advantage of partitioning in advance is that the installer will use the swap space to speed up the install. Thanks Herman for the tip.
But, I like to have several 25GB roots if hard drive is large enough, I prefer separate /data over /home but that requires a little more configuration after the install to set up.
http://www.psychocats.net/ubuntu/installseparatehome

Ubuntu Install steps - then choose guide, close to what you want.
http://members.iinet.net/~herman546/index.html (http://members.iinet.net/%7Eherman546/index.html)
Installs with good screenshots/examples, for 10.10 but screens are not a lot different for 11.04:
http://members.iinet.net.au/~herman546/p22.html (http://members.iinet.net.au/%7Eherman546/p22.html)

[deltacomp]

Can you upgrade the 9.04 to 11.04? Have you tried to install 10.10 and upgrade? I have not installed 11.04 from a clean install so I don't know what options there are. If it is the same as 10.10 you can select advanced options and list partition you want to install to.

[michaugt]

Thank you so much for the quick reply.

I will start on your suggestions and be back!

Edit: deltacomp, i would like to do a clean install if possible but am willing to try upgrades if all else fails.

Thank you for the suggestion =)

[srs5694]

Now the 11.04 disk sees all of my partitions but still refuses to read any OS on disk and won't let me side by side.

As I read it, these are the only problems right at this moment:



The Ubuntu installer "refuses to read any OS on disk"
The Ubuntu installer lacks a side-by-side installation option



The precise mix of installation options changes from time to time, and I don't know offhand if the side-by-side option remains at all in 11.04. (It's been trouble-prone in the past.) Does anybody know for certain? If it's been removed, then the second issue is of course not a bug, and no amount of fiddling with your partitions will resurrect an excised feature.

It's unclear what you mean by the first issue. The installer should identify non-Linux partitions, and in some cases it should let you resize them, and you should be able to specify mount points for them when you partition manually, but beyond that the installer shouldn't do much with them. You've indicated that the installer can "see" all of your partitions, so it's not clear what functionality is missing. If you could elaborate, that might be critical.

Leaving aside this point, it could be that you need to select the "custom partition" option. You should then be able to resize your Windows partition (although you can do that in Windows, and perhaps a bit more safely) and manually create/modify your Linux partitions for installation.

[michaugt]

When I said it can "see" the partitions that is only after I installed 9.04. Before that it just lumped my HDD together as an unallocated mess.

Custom, now let's me set what I want but errors out at writing to disk.

I hope that is clearer. And thank you for the reply.

[michaugt]

Alright! i have some actual info that hopefully one of you can use.

Took this picture while in 11.04 LiveCD.

It is information of the Vista partition.

Finally something that has given me useful errors!

[Quackers]

srs5694, the 11.04 installer will normally offer the "alongside" option together with a "something else" option but I believe these only appear when it finds enough usable space/partitions for Ubuntu. In the OP's case I suspect that the installer views the prospective Ubuntu partition as too small and doesn't offer the "side by side" option
If the prospective partition is increased in size (my 11.04 installation is 3.9GB, for some reason) I believe the "alongside" option will then be offered.

[michaugt]

So i unallocated 250g off of the Vista partition and asked 11.04 to use that space manually.

I get an error saying that it can not read sda and then after hitting back does not see any partitions.

Also, i don't seem to have a way of adding space to the current 9.04 partitions.

[michaugt]

Please click one of the Quick Reply icons in the posts above to activate Quick Reply.

[Quackers]

How did you "unallocate" 250GB of the Vista partition? With what programme?

[michaugt]

How did you "unallocate" 250GB of the Vista partition? With what programme?

The vista manger tool.

[Quackers]

Ok, thanks.
So to recap, you tried to install 11.04 but got no option to install "side by side". That option was not present.
In post #1 you then say
"I logged into Vista formatted the Ubuntu and swap partitions and allocated the space back into the Vista partition."
So Vista recognised the Ubuntu and swap partitions? Did they show as being inside an extended partition? Did you delete that too?
It is normally best to use Windows tools on Windows partitions and Linux tools on Linux partitions. I believe not doing so may have caused a partition problem (with your Vista partition). If gparted finds a problem with a partition or the partition table it reports the whole disc as "unallocated".

[michaugt]

Ok, thanks.
So to recap, you tried to install 11.04 but got no option to install "side by side". That option was not present.
In post #1 you then say
"I logged into Vista formatted the Ubuntu and swap partitions and allocated the space back into the Vista partition."
So Vista recognised the Ubuntu and swap partitions? Did they show as being inside an extended partition? Did you delete that too?
It is normally best to use Windows tools on Windows partitions and Linux tools on Linux partitions. I believe not doing so may have caused a partition problem (with your Vista partition). If gparted finds a problem with a partition or the partition table it reports the whole disc as "unallocated".

Yeah that's pretty much where i am at.

So what do i need to do now to get a dual set up to work?

i am up for anything at this point, so suggest away =)

side note, with all of these problems going on as i stated, 9.04 was able to install fine for what ever that's worth. I can currently boot 9.04 and Vista without error.

[Quackers]

I'm not sure, to be honest, because I can't see what's wrong :-(
You have Vista and Ubuntu 9.04 both booting at the moment.
What does Vista Disk Management screen show currently please?

[michaugt]

I'm not sure, to be honest, because I can't see what's wrong :-(
You have Vista and Ubuntu 9.04 both booting at the moment.
What does Vista Disk Management screen show currently please?

Thumbnail attached.

Again, it looks weird right now but i can (and have) formatted and brought it all together and still have the same problem with 11.04(that's not a problem for 9.04 somehow).

Also, like you said my table is probably messed up from deleting my old Ubuntu partitions in Vista. I just have no idea how to fix it at this point. 9.04 mounts and reads all drives fine and various different programs in Vista have not found errors.

[Quackers]

I am not sure what to suggest other than to back up everything you need from the disc, as a precaution.
srs5694 may have better suggestions (or other forum members) and I would urge you to wait for suggestions.
What I may be tempted to try is either testdisk (to recover the partitions as they were before the problem) or, possibly try Fixparts, which is a program that srs5694 wrote, which can fix some partition problems.
http://www.rodsbooks.com/fixparts/

There is also an option to create a partition table in gparted (I think) but I've never needed to use it and am absolutely uncertain as to when it should be used. Maybe other members could assist there. It would almost certainly have serious repercussions if used wrongly!
Obviously, whatever is wrong needs to be fixed before anything else can be installed. I would wait for further suggestions before doing anything too drastic :-)

[oldfred]

After resizing Vista did it run a chkdsk, or have you?

I was able to boot XP, but then on day gparted would not see any part of my sda drive. XP still worked. But after I ran chkdsk then gparted saw sda. So try chkdsk in windows. And with chkdsk if there are any errors you have to rerun it until there are no errors. It does not fix everything on one pass.

[michaugt]

After resizing Vista did it run a chkdsk, or have you?

I was able to boot XP, but then on day gparted would not see any part of my sda drive. XP still worked. But after I ran chkdsk then gparted saw sda. So try chkdsk in windows. And with chkdsk if there are any errors you have to rerun it until there are no errors. It does not fix everything on one pass.

I have tried but i will give it another go.

Thank you =)

Edit: it takes awhile so i guess i am out for the night. I will check back on this thread tomorrow.

[srs5694]

Running CHKDSK in Windows, as oldfred suggested and you're now doing, is a good idea.

If that doesn't help, then my comment is that your symptoms are very strange, and one rule of thumb I've learned over the years is that when symptoms are very strange, suspect hardware problems. Therefore, I recommend you run a SMART test utility, such as GSmartControl or smartctl in Linux. Check to see if there are any problem reports, and if there aren't, run a full check on the disk. If everything checks out, that suggests the disk is OK and you can focus on other things. If the SMART utility reports problems, though, you should replace the disk ASAP.

You might also want to check, and perhaps replace, your drive's data cable. At the very least, unplug it and plug it back in again, in case the connector is just a tiny bit loose.

In terms of software solutions, if nothing else works, doing a backup/repartition/restore operation makes sense to me. That'll ensure you're starting from a clean slate.

The option to create a partition table in GParted to which Quackers refers is destructive, in the sense that your existing partitions will no longer be defined when you're done. Using this option (or something similar in another utility) would be a necessary part of the backup/repartition/restore operation to which I referred.

[michaugt]

Hi srs5694,

Just ran GSmartControl. It came up with a bunch of errors and i am not sure what output would be important to post so i have attacked the .txt output.

I got one red flag for End to End Error.

I would love to know if the drive is shot or if these problems are correctable.

Thanks for the help guys even if it is Hardware related its good to get it fixed up.

[michaugt]

Update:

Ran SeaTools and received errors as well.

Edit: Can't figure out how to solved tag the thread.

Anyways, thanks for the help guys, much appreciated.

[srs5694]

Most problems reported by SMART utilities are not correctable. (One exception springs to mind: If the current drive temperature is high, you can reduce it by shutting down and changing your computer's cooling characteristics.)

That said, the URLs noted near the start of the output mention firmware updates. According to Wikipedia, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S.M.A.R.T.) an end-to-end error (the type of problem being reported) is basically a problem of data corruption, and it sounds like it's data corruption within the drive's electronics. Thus, it's conceivable that a firmware update would fix the problem.

If I were you, I'd read those URLs thoroughly (I just skimmed them), and I'd probably apply the firmware update. Before doing that, though, I'd back up any important data off the drive, just in case the firmware update goes badly. With any luck that'll fix the problem, but if not, I'd replace the drive. If it's still under warranty, I'd ask Seagate for a replacement.